INFORMATION

Anyone familiar with astronomy will know that galaxies come in a fairly limited range of shapes, typically; spiral, elliptical, barred-spiral and irregular. The barred-spiral galaxy has been known to be a feature of the modern universe but a study from astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope has recently challenged that view. Following on observations using the James Webb Space Telescope has found the bar feature in some spiral galaxies as early as 11 billion years ago suggesting galaxies evolved faster in the early Universe than previously expected.  Our own Galaxy, the Milky Way is a spiral galaxy with a central nucleus and spiral arms emanating out from the centre. Our Solar System lies about 25,000 light years from the centre. Look at the galaxies in the sky though and you will see a real mix but generally they fall under the four main categories. Edwin Hubble tried to bring some structure to the different shapes by developing his galaxy classification scheme to articula...

When a spacecraft arrives at its destination, it settles into an orbit for science operations. But after the primary mission is complete, there might be other interesting orbits where scientists would like to explore. Maneuvering to a different orbit requires fuel, limiting a spacecraft’s number of maneuvers. Researchers have discovered that some orbital paths allow for no-fuel orbital changes. But the figuring out these paths also are computationally expensive. Knot theory has been shown to find these pathways more easily, allowing the most fuel-efficient routes to be plotted. This is similar to how our GPS mapping software plots the most efficient routes for us here on Earth. In mathematics, knot theory is the study of closed curves in three dimensions. Think of it as looking at a knotted necklace or a tangle of fishing line, and figuring out how to untangle them in the most efficient manner. In the same way, a spacecraft’s path could be computed in a crowded planetary system – a...

The list of chemicals found in space is growing longer and longer. Astronomers have found amino acids and other building blocks of life on comets, asteroids, and even floating freely in space. Now, researchers have found another complex chemical to add to the list. The new chemical is known as 2-methoxyethanol (CH 3 OCH 2 CH 2 OH). It’s one of several methoxy molecules that scientists have found in space. But with 13 atoms, it’s one of the largest and most complex ones ever detected. A team of scientists called the McGuire Group specializes in detecting chemicals in space. The McGuire Group and other researchers from institutions in Florida and France worked together to find 2-methoxyethanol. The researchers published their findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. It’s titled “ Rotational Spectrum and First Interstellar Detection of 2-methoxyethanol Using ALMA Observations of NGC 6334I .” The lead author is Zachary Fried, a graduate student in the McGuire Group at MIT. A ba...

Life on Earth would not be possible without food, water, light, a breathable atmosphere and surprisingly, a magnetic field. Without it, Earth, and its inhabitants would be subjected to the harmful radiation from space making life here, impossible. If we find exoplanets with similar magnetospheres then those worlds may well be habitable. The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) which is still under construction should be able to detect such magnetospheres from radio emissions giving us real insight into our exoplanet cousins.  The magnetic field of Earth is the result of churning motion of liquid iron and nickel in the outer core. The resultant magnetic field has properties of a giant magnet with a north pole and a south pole and it extends from the core outward, enveloping the entire planet.  The presence of the field stops harmful solar radiation and cosmic particles. Magnetic fields are not static though and it is not uncommon for them to flip, as has happened to our own magnetic ...

When I heard about this I felt an amused twinge of envy. Over the last year I have been using an unimpressive 4G broadband service and at best get 20 Mbps, NASA’s Psyche mission has STILL been getting 23 Mbps at 225 million km away! It’s all thanks to the prototype optical transmission system employed on the probe. It means it can get up to 100 times more data transmission rate than usual radio.  NASA’s Pysche mission is on its way to explore the metal rich asteroid between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter called, not surprisingly Psyche. The intriguing thing about the asteroid is that it seems to be the iron rich core of an unformed planet. The spacecraft carried a wealth of scientific instruments to explore the asteroid including an imaging rig, gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and an X-band Gravity platform.  It began its two year journey on 13 October with its destination, a tiny world that may help us unravel some of the mysteries of the formation of our ...

The Hubble Space Telescope has gone through its share of gyroscopes in its 34-year history in space. Astronauts replaced the gyros during the last servicing mission in 2009, bringing it back up to six (three with three spares), but they only last so long. Last week, HST went into safe mode because one of the gyros experienced fluctuations in power. NASA paused the telescope’s science operations today to investigate the fluctuations and perhaps come up with a fix. With this one gyro experiencing problems, only two of the gyros remain fully operational. HST works best with three gyros, and so engineers are working to understand the issue and hopefully figure out a way to fix it remotely. However, several years ago, engineers figured out a way to still conduct science operations with only a single gyro. HST entered safe mode on April 23, 2024 when the one gyro sent faulty readings. This particular gyro also caused Hubble to enter safe mode last November after returning similar faulty...

Any event in the cosmos generates gravitational waves, the bigger the event, the more disturbance. Events where black holes and neutron stars collide can send out waves detectable here on Earth. It is possible that there can be an event in visible light when neutron stars collide so to take advantage of every opportunity an early warning is essential. The teams at LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observatories are working on an alert system that will alert astronomers within 30 seconds fo a gravity wave event. If warning is early enough it may be possible to identify the source and watch the after glow.  The very fabric of space-time can be thought of as a giant celestial ocean. Any movement within the ocean will generate waves. The same is true of movements and disturbances in space, causing a compression in one direction while stretching out in the perpendicular direction. Modern gravity wave detectors are usually L-shaped with beams shining down each arm of the building. The two beams are com...

During the Space Race, scientists in both the United States and the Soviet Union investigated the concept of ion propulsion. Like many early Space Age proposals, the concept was originally explored by luminaries like Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Hermann Oberth – two of the “forefathers of rocketry.” Since then, the technology has been validated repeatedly by missions like the Deep Space-1 (DS-1) technology demonstrator, the ESA’s Smart-1 lunar orbiter, JAXA’s Hayabusa and Hayabysa 2 satellites, and NASA’s Dawn mission. Looking to the future of space exploration, researchers at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) have been busy developing a next-generation ion engine that combines extreme fuel efficiency with high acceleration. These efforts have led to the NASA-H71M sub-kilowatt Hall-effect thruster, a small spacecraft electric propulsion (SSEP) system that will enable new types of planetary science missions. With the help of commercial partners like SpaceLogistics , this thrus...

The Milky Way has a missing pulsar problem in its core. Astronomers have tried to explain this for years. One of the more interesting ideas comes from a team of astronomers in Europe and invokes dark matter, neutron stars, and primordial black holes (PBHs). Astronomer Roberto Caiozzo, of the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, led a group examining the missing pulsar problem. “We do not observe pulsars of any kind in this inner region (except for the magnetar PSR J1745-2900),” he wrote in an email. “This was thought to be due to technical limitations, but the observation of the magnetar seems to suggest otherwise.” That magnetar orbits Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the core of the Milky Way. An x-ray map of the core of the Milky Way showing the position of the recently discovered magnetar orbiting the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. Courtesy Chandra and XMM-Newton. The team examined other possible reasons why pulsars don’t appear in the core and loo...

Space travel and exploration was never going to be easy. Failures are sadly all too common but it’s wonderful to see missions exceed expectations. The Japanese Space Agency’s SLIM lunar lander was only supposed to survive a single day but it’s survived three brutal, harsh lunar nights and is still going. The temperatures plummet to -170C at night and the lander was never designed to operate into the night. Even sat upside down on the surface it’s still sending back pictures and data.  The Japanese agency’s lunar lander known as SLIM (Smart Lander for Investigating the Moon) began its lunar journey on 19 January 2024 when it touched down on the surface of the Moon. Its mission was to test the lunar landing technology and to collect data about the surface geology.  An artist’s conception shows Japan’s SLIM lander in its upended position on the lunar surface. (Credit: JAXA) Unfortunately, soon after landing it became clear that the probe had landed at a strange angle, leani...

It’s difficult to actually visualise a universe that is changing. Things tend to happen at snails pace albeit with the odd exception. Take the formation of galaxies growing in the early universe. Their immense gravitational field would suck in dust and gas from the local vicinity creating vast collections of stars. In the very centre of these young galaxies, supermassive blackholes would reside turning the galaxy into powerful quasars. A recent survey by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveals that black holes can create a powerful solar wind that can remove gas from galaxies faster than they can form into stars, shutting off the creation of new stars. To remove the confusion and mystique around black holes, they are the corpse of massive stars. When supermassive stars collapse at the end of their lives their core turns into a point source that is so incredibly dense that even light, travelling at 300,000 kilometres per second, is unable to escape. It’s believed that many galax...

We are all very familiar with the concept of the Earth’s magnetic field. It turns out that most objects in space have magnetic fields but it’s quite tricky to measure them. Astronomers have developed an ingenious way to measure the magnetic field of the Milky Way using polarised light from interstellar dust grains that align themselves to the magnetic field lines. A new survey has begun this mapping process and has mapped an area that covers the equivalent of 15 times the full Moon.  Many people will remember experiments in school with iron filings and bar magnets to unveil their magnetic field. It’s not quite so easy to capture the magnetic field of the Milky Way though. The new method to measure the field relies upon the small dust grains which permeate space between the stars. The grains of dust are similar in size to smoke particles but they are not spherical. Just like a boat turning itself into the current, the dust particles’ long axis tends to align with the local magneti...

Solar Sails are an enigmatic and majestic way to travel across the gulf of space. Drawing an analogy to the sail ships of the past, they are one of the most efficient ways of propelling craft in space. On Tuesday a RocketLab Electron rocket launched NASA’s new Advanced Composite Solar Sail System. It aims to test the deployment of large solar sails in low-earth orbit and on Wednesday, NASA confirmed they had successfully deployed a 9 metre sail.  In 1886 the motor car was invented. In 1903 humans made their first powered flight. Just 58 years later, humans made their first trip into space on board a rocket. Rocket technology has changed significantly over the centuries, yes centuries. The development of the rocket started way back in the 13th Century with the Chinese and Mongolians firing rocket propelled arrows at each other. Things moved on somewhat since then and we now have solid and liquid rocket propellant, ion engines and solar sails with more technology in the wings....

Scientists detected the first long-predicted gravitational wave in 2015, and since then, researchers have been hungering for better detectors. But the Earth is warm and seismically noisy, and that will always limit the effectiveness of Earth-based detectors. Is the Moon the right place for a new gravitational wave observatory? It might be. Sending telescopes into space worked well, and mounting a GW observatory on the Moon might, too, though the proposal is obviously very complex. Most of astronomy is about light. The better we can sense it, the more we learn about nature. That’s why telescopes like the Hubble and the JWST are in space. Earth’s atmosphere distorts telescope images and even blocks some light, like infrared. Space telescopes get around both of those problems and have revolutionized astronomy. Gravitational waves aren’t light, but sensing them still requires extreme sensitivity. Just as Earth’s atmosphere can introduce ‘noise’ into telescope observations, so can Earth...

Well over 5,000 planets have been found orbiting other star systems. One of the satellites hunting for them is TESS, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Astronomers using TESS think they are made a rather surprising discovery; their first free-floating – or rogue – planet. The planet was discovered using gravitational microlensing where the planet passed in front of a star, distorting its light and revealing its presence. We are all familiar with the eight planets in our Solar System and perhaps becoming familiar with the concept of exoplanets. But there is another category of planet, the rogue planets. These mysterious objects travel through space without being gravitationally bound to any star. Their origin has been cause for much debate but popular theory suggests they were ejected from their host star system during formation, or perhaps later due to gravitational interaction.  Artist impression of glory on exoplanet WASP-76b. Credit: ESA Simulations have suggested ...