The universe is full of mysterious exploding phenomena that go boom in the dark. One particular type of ephemeral event, called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT), has bewildered astronomers for a decade because of its very brief duration. Now, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope — designed to go hunting for planets across our galaxy — has…
The movements of more than 300,000 stars surveyed by ESA’s Gaia satellite reveal that rare close encounters with our Sun might disturb the cloud of comets at the far reaches of our Solar System, sending some towards Earth in the distant future. As the Solar System moves through the Galaxy, and as other stars move…
While surveying the positions of over a billion stars, ESA’s Gaia mission is also measuring their colour, a key diagnostic to study the physical properties of stars. A new image (above) provides a preview of Gaia’s first full-colour all-sky map, which will be unleashed in its highest resolution with the next data release in 2018….
Hold out your hand for 10 seconds. A dozen electrons and muons just zipped unfelt through your palm. The ghostly particles are what scientists call “secondary cosmic rays” — subatomic debris from collisions between molecules high in Earth’s atmosphere and high-energy cosmic rays from outer space. This daily shower, which never stops, is a sign…
This shot from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a maelstrom of glowing gas and dark dust within one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This stormy scene shows a stellar nursery known as N159, an HII region over 150 light-years across. N159 contains many hot young stars. These stars…
Three decades ago, astronomers spotted one of the brightest exploding stars in more than 400 years. The titanic supernova, called Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A), blazed with the power of 100 million suns for several months following its discovery on Feb. 23, 1987. This is where Supernova 1987A is located Since that first sighting, SN 1987A…
The universe suddenly looks a lot more crowded, thanks to a deep-sky census assembled from surveys taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Astronomers came to the surprising conclusion that there are at least 10 times more galaxies in the observable universe than previously thought. The results have clear implications for galaxy formation,…
Great balls of fire! NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has detected superhot blobs of gas, each twice as massive as the planet Mars, being ejected near a dying star. The plasma balls are zooming so fast through space it would take only 30 minutes for them to travel from Earth to the moon. This stellar “cannon…
Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the TV series “Star Trek,” which first aired September 8th,1966, a new infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope may remind fans of the historic show. Since ancient times, people have imagined familiar objects when gazing at the heavens. There are many examples of this phenomenon, known…
At the centre of this image, captured by ESA’s Herschel space observatory, is a truly peculiar cosmic object: a star named IRAS 19312+1950. Located over 12,000 light-years from us, this star has puzzled astronomers for many years because it shows conflicting signs of being both extremely old and extremely young. Astronomers have spotted signs of emission…
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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