INFORMATION

When NASA's Artemis II crew swung around the Moon in April, the world watched in extraordinary detail and a breakthrough laser communications system was the reason why. Bolted to the outside of the Orion capsule, a compact optical terminal beamed 484 gigabytes of data back to Earth using invisible infrared light, outpacing traditional radio systems by a factor of tens. The result was some of the most vivid imagery ever captured in deep space, and a technology demonstration that will fundamentally change how humanity communicates beyond Earth. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/LY6I7d2 via IFTTT

Our Sun is a bit of an outlier in the general stellar population. We typically think of stars as being solitary wanderers throughout the galaxy. But roughly half of Sun-like stars are locked in with more than one companion star. If there are two, it’s known as a “binary” system, but in many cases there are even more stars all collectively tied together by gravity. Astronomers have long debated why this happens, and a new paper, available in pre-print on arXiv from Ryan Sponzilli, a graduate student at the University of Illinois, makes an argument for a mechanism known as disk fragmentation. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/8WGdEul via IFTTT

Mercury is one of the four rocky worlds of the Solar System, yet its chemistry is very different from Earth, Venus, and Mars. Missions to the planet show that it has an iron-poor, but sulfur- and magnesium-rich crust. Furthermore, it's known to planetary scientists as the most reduced planet in the Solar system. It means that the chemical makeup is dominated by sulfides, carbides, and silicides -- as opposed to oxides like we see here on Earth. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/vUQX3Vf via IFTTT

Binary stars are common, but for a long time astronomers have thought that exoplanets would have trouble forming around them. In recent years, powerful telescopes have detected about 50 of these planets. Now, new simulations show that their formation isn't actually rare, it's just that they tend to be on wide orbits, with few opportunities to observe transits. Also, many of them are ejected and become rogue planets. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/UNFvanq via IFTTT

It has been a dream of astronomers and solar scientists for ages. A new mission gives solar researchers a powerful new tool in their arsenal: on-demand, total solar eclipses. Launched in 2024, The European Space Agency’s Proba-3 mission has proven the feasibility of a free-flying, space-based coronagraph. Now, first science results from the mission are giving us a view of the origin of space weather. The results were recently published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/jcd3E9s via IFTTT

Exoplanet science and the search for life beyond Earth continue to advance at break-neck speeds, with the number of confirmed exoplanets by NASA rapidly approaching 6,300, with 223 of those exoplanets being designated as terrestrial (rocky) exoplanets. With the promise of discovering an increasing number of Earth-sized exoplanets increasing every day, new telescopes from across the world have the opportunity to contribute to this incredible field. from Universe Today https://ift.tt/ydmNwMu via IFTTT