Tag: exploration

Slope streaks within Mars’ largest mountain region

1:51 pm

Overview map

Today’s cool image revisits Lycus Sulci, the largest mountain range on Mars, about 1,400 mile wide and 1,800 miles long. The overview map to the right gives a sense of the roughness and chaotic nature of this region, extending north from Mars’ largest volcano, Olympus Mons.

At present scientists are unsure of the geology that formed Lycus Sulci, and how it is linked with Olympus Mons. The wide view to the right suggests it is the remains of a very ancient lava flow descending from the volcano that over time has become eroded to produce this wildly knobby terrain. That hypothesis remains unproven however. There is also evidence that the material here might instead be volcanic ash, deposited in many layers and eroded away with time.

The location of the cool image below is marked by the white dot, with the inset providing us a wider view of the surrounding terrain. Note the two craters to the north and west. Both appear to have been partly filled by flows coming from the south and east, respectively, adding weight to the theory that this region formed from lava flow.
» Read more

2 comments

Webb: An Earth-sized exoplanet in habitable zone appears to lack an atmosphere

10:17 am

Scientists using the Webb Space Telescope have concluded that an Earth-sized exoplanet, orbiting the red dwarf star Trappist-1 in the habitable zone, does not appear to have an atmosphere, or if it does have one it is not like Earth’s.

The TRAPPIST-1 system is located 40 light-years away and was revealed as the record-holder for most Earth-sized rocky planets around a single star in 2017, thanks to data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope and other observatories. Due to that star being a dim, relatively cold red dwarf, the “habitable zone” or “Goldilocks zone” – where the planet’s temperature may be just right, such that liquid surface water is possible – lies much closer to the star than in our solar system. TRAPPIST-1 d, the third planet from the red dwarf star, lies on the cusp of that temperate zone, yet its distance to its star is only 2 percent of Earth’s distance from the Sun. TRAPPIST-1 d completes an entire orbit around its star, its year, in only four Earth days.

Webb’s NIRSpec (Near-Infrared Spectrograph) instrument did not detect molecules from TRAPPIST-1 d that are common in Earth’s atmosphere, like water, methane, or carbon dioxide.

You can read the paper here [pdf].

The likelihood of life on this exoplanet has always been slim, simply because it orbits so close to the red dwarf, where it is vulnerable to the high energy flares the star periodically releases.

Leave a comment

When Martian lava meets a Martian mountain

12:17 pm

When Martian lava meets a Martian mountain
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 24, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and was posted yesterday by the science team to illustrate the vast lava flows that cover much of Mars. From the caption:

This image captures the edge of a lava flow that partially buries older terrain in the Martian Southern Highlands. Where the edge of the lava flow made contact with the higher-standing topography, it formed a rumpled and ridged surface.

This lava flow is one of many massive flows that extend southwest from Arsia Mons, one of the largest shield volcanoes on Mars.

The mountain to the south rises about 3,700 feet above that rumpled lava ocean at its base.
» Read more

Leave a comment

Radar images of near Earth asteroid as it zipped past the Earth

9:11 am

Radar images of near Earth asteroid
Click for original. Go here for movie made from these images.

Using the Goldstone radar antenna in California, astronomers have produced a series of 41 radar images of the near Earth asteroid 2025 OW as it made a close pass of the Earth on July 28, 2025.

Those images, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, are to the right.

The asteroid safely passed at about 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers), or 1.6 times the distance from Earth to the Moon.

The asteroid was discovered on July 4, 2025, by the NASA-funded Pan-STARRS2 survey telescope on Haleakala in Maui, Hawaii. These Goldstone observations suggest that 2025 OW is about 200 feet (60 meters) wide and has an irregular shape. The observations also indicate that it is rapidly spinning, completing one rotation every 1½ to 3 minutes, making it one of the fastest-spinning near-Earth asteroids that the powerful radar system has observed. The observations resolve surface features down to 12 feet (3.75 meters) wide.

The asteroid’s fast rotation suggests it is a solid object, structurally strong, rather than a rubble pile held together loosely by gravity. It would thus be very damaging if it should ever hit the Earth.

No worries however. The refined orbital data says this asteroid will not come this close again in the foreseeable future.

8 comments

Webb: Evidence of gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of Alpha Centuri

2:54 pm

Webb infrared data
Click for original image.

The uncertainty of science: Astronomers using the Webb Space Telescope now think they have detected a gas giant exoplanet orbiting the central star of the Alpha Centuri triple star system, the closest star to our Sun at only four light years distance.

The false-color image to the right shows the candidate exoplanet labeled as S1, with the light of the central star blocked out but indicated by the star at the center. A lot of processing was required to bring out this bright blob, including eliminating optical effects that normally act to hide such objects.

Alpha Centauri, located in the far southern sky, is made up of the binary Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B, both Sun-like stars, and the faint red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri A is the third brightest star in the night sky. While there are three confirmed planets orbiting Proxima Centauri, the presence of other worlds surrounding Alpha Centauri A and Alpha Centauri B has proved challenging to confirm.

Now, Webb’s observations from its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are providing the strongest evidence to date of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centauri A. …Based on the brightness of the planet in the mid-infrared observations and the orbit simulations, researchers say it could be a gas giant approximately the mass of Saturn orbiting Alpha Centauri A in an elliptical path varying between 1 to 2 times the distance between Sun and Earth.

If confirmed the exoplanet would be orbiting the star within the habitable zone, though as a gas giant life as we know it would likely be impossible. The location, only four light years away, makes this exoplanet and the entire system a prime target for further observations.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

3 comments

India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter photographs Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander

2:27 pm

Athena as seen by Chandrayaan-2
Click for source.

India’s Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter has now produced a new high resolution image of Intuitive Machines’ Athena lander, sitting on its side inside a small crater near the Moon’s south pole.

The IM-2 ‘Athena’ lander attempted a soft touchdown near the Moon’s South Pole on 6 March, 2025. Although the lander remained intact, it failed to reach its intended landing spot and ended up tipping over on its side inside a crater.

In the … images taken by the OHRC instrument on board the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter, the Athena lander can be clearly seen lying on its side inside a crater.

This image, posted to the right, compares very favorably with the photos taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) in March 2025. The lander’s legs can clearly be seen sticking out toward the top of the picture.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

One comment

Strange rocks on Mars

11:25 am

Coral on Mount Sharp!
Click for original image.

Float rock in Jezero Crater
Click for original image.

Time for two cool images, from two different craters separated by thousands of miles on Mars! The first image to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on July 24, 2025 by the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) at the end of the robot arm of Mars rover Curiosity, and shows a really strange rock formation that resembles a piece of coral on Earth.

Curiosity has found many small features like this one, which formed billions of years ago when liquid water still existed on Mars [in this region]. Water carried dissolved minerals into rock cracks and later dried, leaving the hardened minerals behind. Eons of sandblasting by the wind wore away the surrounding rock, producing unique shapes.

The second image, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on August 5, 2025 by the left high resolution camera on the rover Perseverance. It shows what appears what geologists call a “float rock”, something that was created geologically somewhere else and transported to this location later.

In this case the rock appears lavalike in nature. Since Perseverance is exploring the exterior rim of Jezero Crater, we could be looking at the impact melt created when the bolide hit the ground to create the crater. Material would be instantly melted as well as flung outward as ejecta, with this strangely shaped rock an example.

The problem with this theory however is that the rock appears to have solidified well before it hit the ground at this location. Its shape also suggests it solidified within a crack, thus molding it to this shape, with its top once at the bottom, the lava flowing downward. The mystery then is how it ended up as we see it, upside down and exposed.

7 comments

New Hubble observations of Comet 3I/Atlas refine its size

10:42 am

3I/Atlas as seen by Hubble on July 21, 2025
Click for original image.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have refined significantly the size of the interstellar object Comet 3I/Atlas as it zips through the solar system in its journey through the galaxy.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, is a Hubble image taken on July 21, 2025. The streaks are background stars.

Hubble’s observations allow astronomers to more accurately estimate the size of the comet’s solid, icy nucleus. The upper limit on the diameter of the nucleus is 3.5 miles (5.6 kilometers), though it could be as small as 1,000 feet (320 meters) across, researchers report. Though the Hubble images put tighter constraints on the size of the nucleus compared to previous ground-based estimates, the solid heart of the comet presently cannot be directly seen, even by Hubble.

…Hubble also captured a dust plume ejected from the Sun-warmed side of the comet, and the hint of a dust tail streaming away from the nucleus. Hubble’s data yields a dust-loss rate consistent with comets that are first detected around 300 million miles from the Sun. This behavior is much like the signature of previously seen Sun-bound comets originating within our solar system.

In other words, though this object comes from far outside our solar system, it so far appears to closely resemble comets from our own system. If confirmed, this fact is quite significant, as it suggests the formation of solar systems throughout the galaxy are likely to be relatively similar to our own.

2 comments

Hera photographs two main belt asteroids on its way to Didymos/Dimorphos

10:12 am

Asteroid Otero as seen by Hera
Click for original image.

The science team for the European Space Agency’s Hera asteroid probe, on its way to the binary asteroid Didymos/Dimorphos in late 2026, has successfully taken images of two different main belt asteroids, demonstrating once again that its camera and pointing capabilities are operating as expected.

The image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced, shows all the observations of Otero, the first asteroid observed, as it moved upward in the field of view. The result was that vertical line of dots.

On 11 May 2025, as Hera cruised through the main asteroid belt beyond the orbit of Mars, the spacecraft turned its attention toward Otero, a rare A-type asteroid discovered almost 100 years ago.

From a distance of approximately three million kilometres, Otero appeared as a moving point of light – easily mistaken for a star if not for its subtle motion across the background sky. Hera captured images of Otero using its Asteroid Framing Camera – a navigational and scientific instrument that will be used to guide the spacecraft during its approach to Didymos next year.

The second observation of asteroid Kellyday was even less spectacular visually, but because that asteroid was forty times fainter than Otero, the observation was more challenging, and thus its success more significant.

Hera will arrive at the Didymos/Dimorphos binary asteroid in 2026, where it will make close-up observations of the changes the asteroids have undergone following Dart’s impact of Dimorphos in 2022. Subsequent ground- and space-based observations have been extensive and on-going, but the close-up view will be ground-breaking.

Leave a comment

China completes landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander

9:49 am

China's manned lunar lander during landing and take-off tests
Click for original image.

China announced today that it has successfully completed landing and take-off tests of its manned lunar lander.

That lander is shown to the right, its engines firing as its likely descends, held up by cables to simulate the lunar gravity. From the caption:

This file photo shows a manned lunar lander during a trial at a test site in Huailai County, north China’s Hebei Province. China on Thursday announced that it has successfully completed a comprehensive test for the landing and takeoff of its manned lunar lander at a test site in Huailai County, Hebei Province.

The test completed on Wednesday represents a key step in the development of China’s manned lunar exploration program, and it also marks the first time that China has carried out a test for extraterrestrial landing and takeoff of a manned spacecraft, said the China Manned Space Agency.

History buffs will immediately notice the similarity of this lander to the Lunar Module (LM) that the U.S. used during the Apollo missions. What is not clear is whether the lander will have a separate descent and ascent stage, as the LM did, and if so, whether these flight tests included separate operations of each.

3 comments

New data raises doubts about exoplanet having chemicals that on Earth come from life

1:02 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using new data from the Webb Space Telescope, scientists now conclude that the identification on an exoplanet in April 2025 of the molecules dimethyl sulfide (DMS) and/or dimethyl disulfide (DMDS) — both of which on Earth are only associated with the presence of life — is now uncertain and that these molecules likely aren’t there.

The new work uses [Webb] data to better qualify what is going on. The work confirms the presence of an ocean on this peculiar exoplanet, although it can’t confirm if there is a thick or thin atmosphere. They couldn’t find water vapor in the atmosphere, suggesting that there is an efficient cold trap, keeping evaporation to a minimum on this temperate sub-Neptune world.

Those potential biosignatures were all below the threshold for an undeniable detection, and their model suggests that a possible presence of DMS could be explained by sources unrelated to life. They advise considering more and different molecules to use as biosignatures. Astronomers are studying worlds that are very different from our own, and the chemical signatures that seem obvious here on Earth might not fit well with those exoplanets.

In other words, they simply don’t have enough data to know, one way or the other. No surprise, The science of studying exoplanets is in its infancy, and right now can only tease out the smallest of details based on our limited technology and the distances involved.

You can read the new paper here [pdf]. It notes further that using these molecules as a sign of life is also a mistake, as they can be created in other ways having nothing to do with biology.

Leave a comment

Curiosity looks back

10:12 am

Curiosity looks back
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken on July 28, 2025 by the left navigation camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks to the north, down the flanks of Mount Sharp and across the floor of Gale Crater to its mountainous rim about 30 miles way, seen on the horizon.

The view is so clear because of the season, as noted in the science team’s blog post today:

We’re still in the time of year where the atmosphere at Gale is reasonably dust-free (at least, compared to later in the year), allowing us to look all the way out to and beyond the Gale crater rim. The upper slopes of Mount Sharp have also re-emerged to our east after spending months hidden behind the walls of Gediz Vallis. There’s a bit more sand and dust in this location than we’ve seen recently, so we can also see the trail left behind by the rover’s wheels as we drove to this location

The ridge in the foreground is an example of the boxwork Curiosity is presently traversing. It is now on one of those ridges, and will be moving along it in short drives as the science team studies the geology here. The rover’s tracks leading up to this position can be seen clearly.
» Read more

One comment

A Webb false color image of a planetary nebula

9:32 am

A Webb false color image of a planetary nebula
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and sharpened to post here, was released today by the science team of the Webb Space Telescope, showing the planetary nebula NGC 6072 in infrared false color.

This particular image was one of two taken by Webb, and looked at the nebula in the near infrared.

[I]t’s readily apparent that this nebula is multi-polar. This means there are several different elliptical outflows jetting out either way from the center, one from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock, another from 1 o’clock to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock. The outflows may compress material as they go, resulting in a disk seen perpendicular to it. Astronomers say this is evidence that there are likely at least two stars at the center of this scene. Specifically, a companion star is interacting with an aging star that had already begun to shed some of its outer layers of gas and dust.

The central region of the planetary nebula glows from the hot stellar core, seen as a light blue hue in near-infrared light. The dark orange material, which is made up of gas and dust, follows pockets or open areas that appear dark blue. This clumpiness could be created when dense molecular clouds formed while being shielded from hot radiation from the central star. There could also be a time element at play. Over thousands of years, inner fast winds could be ploughing through the halo cast off from the main star when it first started to lose mass.

The second image, taken in the mid-infrared, shows expanding dust shells, with some forming an encircling ring around the central nebula.

It is believed that the two stars at the center of this nebula act to churn the expanding material to form this complex shape. Imagine them functioning almost like the blades in a blender.

Leave a comment

Thales Alenia ships the orbit insertion module for the Mars sample return mission

8:59 am

Though the entire project remains in limbo at NASA and might be cancelled, the European aerospace company Thales Alenia this week completed construction of the orbit insertion module for the Mars sample return mission that will place the orbiter — also built by European companies — in Mars orbit and will eventually bring the samples back to Earth.

On 28 July, Thales Alenia Space announced that the module had passed its test campaign with “excellent results.” According to the update, the company had packed and shipped the Orbit Insertion Module from its Turin facilities to Airbus in Stevenage a few days earlier. The delivery marks a key milestone in the development of the Mars Return Orbiter.

The broader Earth Return Orbiter project passed a key milestone in July 2024 with the completion of the Platform Critical Design Review. This review confirmed the performance, quality, and reliability of the mission’s systems. With its successful conclusion, Airbus advanced to full spacecraft development, including the integration and testing of its various components, among them the Orbit Insertion Module.

Under the project’s present very complex design, NASA is supposed to provide the ascent rocket and capsule to bring the samples to Europe’s return orbiter. At the moment it is unclear who will build this, or even if it will ever get built. Thus, Europe might be building a very expensive Mars orbiter with no clear mission.

3 comments

Firefly wins new NASA lunar lander contract, worth $176.7 million

8:52 am

NASA announced yesterday that it has awarded Firefly a $176.7 million contract to use the company’s Blue Ghost lunar lander to deliver two rovers and three other science instruments to the Moon’s south pole region.

Under the new CLPS task order, Firefly is tasked with delivering end-to-end payload services to the lunar surface, with a period of performance from Tuesday to March 29, 2030. The company’s lunar lander is targeted to land at the Moon’s South Pole region in 2029.

This is Firefly’s fifth task order award and fourth lunar mission through CLPS. Firefly’s first delivery successfully landed on the Moon’s near side in March 2025 with 10 NASA payloads. The company’s second mission, targeting a launch in 2026, includes a lunar orbit drop-off of a satellite combined with a delivery to the lunar surface on the far side. Firefly’s third lunar mission will target landing in the Gruithuisen Domes on the near side of the Moon in 2028, delivering six experiments to study that enigmatic lunar volcanic terrain.

One of the rovers is being built in partnership with Canada.

2 comments

Galaxies without end

8:55 am

Galaxies without end
Click for original.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, reduced and enhanced to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a monitoring program studying the two supernovae that have occurred in this galaxy previously.

Hubble has turned its attention toward NGC 1309 several times; previous Hubble images of this galaxy were released in 2006 and 2014. Much of NGC 1309’s scientific interest derives from two supernovae, SN 2002fk in 2002 and SN 2012Z in 2012. SN 2002fk was a perfect example of a Type Ia supernova, which happens when the core of a dead star (a white dwarf) explodes.

SN 2012Z, on the other hand, was a bit of a renegade. It was classified as a Type Iax supernova: while its spectrum resembled that of a Type Ia supernova, the explosion wasn’t as bright as expected. Hubble observations showed that in this case, the supernova did not destroy the white dwarf completely, leaving behind a ‘zombie star’ that shone even brighter than it did before the explosion. Hubble observations of NGC 1309 taken across several years also made this the first time the white dwarf progenitor of a supernova has been identified in images taken before the explosion.

The image however carries a far more philosophic component. Except for the star near the top (identified by the four diffraction spikes), every single dot and smudge you see in this picture is a galaxy. NGC 1309 is about 100 million light years away, but behind it along its line of sight and at much greater distances are innumerable other galaxies, so many it is impossible to count them. And each is roughly comparable in size to our own Milky Way galaxy, containing billions of stars.

The scale of the universe is simply impossible to grasp, no matter how hard we might try.

11 comments

Mars and its two moons seen in the infrared by Europa Clipper

10:37 am

Mars and its two moons
Click for original.

Cool image time! The infrared image to the right, cropped, reduced, and enhanced to post here, was taken by Europa Clipper on February 28, 2025 just before it flew past Mars on its way to Jupiter.

Deimos is in the upper left corner, while Phobos is close to Mars.

When the image was taken by the mission’s Europa Thermal Emission Imaging System (E-THEMIS), the spacecraft was about 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from the Red Planet. The image is composed of 200 individual frames, part of a continuous scan of 1,100 frames taken roughly a second apart over a period of 20 minutes. Scientists are using the tiny, point-like images of the moons to check the camera’s focus.

As this is an infrared image (measuring heat), it shows Mars’ northern polar cap as the dark oval at the top of the planet. The bright (and thus warmer) oval to the lower left is the shield volcano Elysium Mons.

This data suggests Europa Clipper’s thermal instrument is working as intended, which is essential for observing the ice content (if any) on Europa once it enters Jupiter orbit in 2030.

8 comments

First Hubble images of interstellar comet 3I/Atlas released

5:03 pm

Comet 3I/Atlas, taken by Hubble
Click for original.

An undergraduate student has just released the first pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the interstellar object 3I/Atlas, confirming that it is a comet as indicated by the earlier image taken by the Gemini North telescope.

One of those images, taken only hours ago, is the inset on the map showing the comet’s route through the solar system to the right. The streaks on the image are either stars or cosmic rays. Though this image is of significantly lower quality than the Gemini North picture, it once again shows both the comet’s nucleus and developing coma.

A preprint [pdf] of a new research paper based on data from both telescopes further confirms this conclusion:

[T]hese results suggest that 3I/ATLAS hosts a coma containing large water ice grains, and that its dust continuum is stable over at least week-long timescales. The spectral characteristics further distinguish 3I from known ultrared trans-Neptunian objects and align it more closely with active Jupiter-family comets.

The last conclusion is very significant. Though the path and speed of this interstellar object says it must come from beyond the solar system, its cometary make-up more resembles comets that reside in the inner solar system. These facts strongly imply that there is at least one other solar systems not very different from our own.

Leave a comment

Astronomers detect exoplanet shaping the protoplanetary disk surrounding a baby star

9:41 am

Star with disk
Click for original image.

Astronomers using two different instruments on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have now directly detected what they think is an exoplanet as it shapes the spiral arms of a baby star’s protoplanetary disk.

In the case of HD 135344B’s disc, swirling spiral arms had previously been detected by another team of astronomers using SPHERE (Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch), an instrument on ESO’s VLT. However, none of the previous observations of this system found proof of a planet forming within the disc.

Now, with observations from the new VLT’s Enhanced Resolution Imager and Spectrograph (ERIS) instrument, the researchers say they may have found their prime suspect. The team spotted the planet candidate right at the base of one of the disc’s spiral arms, exactly where theory had predicted they might find the planet responsible for carving such a pattern.

The newly detected object however might be a brown dwarf and not an exoplanet. More observations are required to reduce the uncertainty.

2 comments

Astronomers detect first evidence of gas condensing to molecular solids in baby solar system

11:39 am

Baby star with jets of new material
Click for original image.

Using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have detected the first evidence of the gas and dust surrounding a young star condensing to molecular solids, thus beginning the initial stages of planet formation.

This newborn planetary system is emerging around HOPS-315, a ‘proto’ or baby star that sits some 1300 light-years away from us and is an analogue of the nascent Sun. Around such baby stars, astronomers often see discs of gas and dust known as ‘protoplanetary discs’, which are the birthplaces of new planets. … Their results show that SiO [silicon monoxide] is present around the baby star in its gaseous state, as well as within these crystalline minerals, suggesting it is only just beginning to solidify. “This process has never been seen before in a protoplanetary disc — or anywhere outside our Solar System,” says co-author Edwin Bergin, a professor at the University of Michigan, USA.

…With these data, the team determined that the chemical signals were coming from a small region of the disc around the star equivalent to the orbit of the asteroid belt around the Sun.

The false-color picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope in Chile. It shows jets blowing out from the central baby star. Orange indicates carbon monoxide, while blue is the silicon monoxide. Initially the astronomers detected these molecules using spectroscopy from the Webb Space Telescope. This ALMA image was then used to identify where these molecules were located in the system.

One comment

First good image released of interstellar object 3I/Atlas as it plunges through the solar system

3:25 pm

First good image of instellator object 3I/Atlas
Click for original image of 3I/Atlas.

Astronomers using the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii have obtained the first good image of the interstellar object 3I/Atlas, as it plunges within the orbit of Jupiter on its way through the solar system.

That picture is to the right, cropped to post here and overlaid on top of a map showing the interstellar object’s calculated path through the solar system.

The picture clearly shows this is a comet, with central nucleus surrounded by a cloud of dust and gas. The data also suggests its nucleus has a diameter of about twelve miles. That it resembles a comet also suggests it is a dirty snowball, made up of ice and rocky material mixed together.

Because it will never get closer to the Sun then just inside the orbit of Mars, it is not likely it will ever get bright enough for naked eye observations. At the same time, it is large enough and will be close enough to make possible some excellent observations as it zips by and leaves the solar system sometime in the fall. The previous two identified interstellar objects, Oumuamua and Comet 21/Borisov, were either too small or too far away as they flew past to get this kind of good data.

7 comments

Webb spots aftermath of collision of two galaxies

10:06 am

colliding galaxies
Click for source.

Using the Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered the collision of two spiral galaxies that appears to have caused a supermassive black hole to collapse in its wake.

The Webb false-color infrared image to the right shows the two galaxies as the red dots, both surrounded by a ring, with the supermassive black hole the bluish spot in between but offset somewhat to the left. Follow-up radio observations suggested that this bluish spot was a supermassive black hole, having a mass of a million suns and sucking up matter from the giant gas cloud that surrounds it.

The team proposes that the black hole formed there via the direct collapse of a gas cloud – a process that may explain some of the incredibly massive black holes Webb has found in the early universe.

This hypothesis however has enormous uncertainties, and requires a lot more observations to confirm. The black hole could simply exist unrelated to the galaxy collision, having come there from elsewhere. Or it could be from a third galaxy in this group that these initial observations have not yet detected.

The image however is quite cool.

Leave a comment

A distant globular cluster

10:03 am

A distant globular cluster
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of a research project to study globular clusters in galaxies other than the Milky Way.

The data for this image comes from an observing programme comparing old globular clusters in nearby dwarf galaxies — the LMC [Large Magellanic Cloud], the Small Magellanic Cloud and the Fornax dwarf spheroidal galaxy — to the globular clusters in the Milky Way galaxy. Our galaxy contains over 150 of these old, spherical collections of tightly-bound stars, which have been studied in depth — especially with Hubble Space Telescope images like this one, which show them in previously-unattainable detail. Being very stable and long-lived, they act as galactic time capsules, preserving stars from the earliest stages of a galaxy’s formation.

Astronomers once thought that the stars in a globular cluster all formed together at about the same time, but study of the old globular clusters in our galaxy has uncovered multiple populations of stars with different ages. In order to use globular clusters as historical markers, we must understand how they form and where these stars of varying ages come from. This observing programme examined old globular clusters like NGC 1786 [pictured] in these external galaxies to see if they, too, contain multiple populations of stars. This research can tell us more not only about how the LMC was originally formed, but the Milky Way Galaxy, too.

This cluster, discovered in 1835 by John Herschel, is about 160,000 light years away.

2 comments

Weird drainages on Mars

11:58 am

Weird drainages on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on Februay 11, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The camera team posted it yesterday as their own cool image, labeling it “A Fissure and Channel near Pavonis Mons”. From the caption:

A linear trough strikes northeast, then abruptly ends (or changes into a narrow ridge). Where the trough ends, a sinuous channel has an east-southeast strike, trending at almost a right angle to the trough. What happened to form these features?

We can speculate that first there was a southwest-to-northeast trending fracture or fault, perhaps associated with a volcanic vent. Groundwater (or some other runny fluid) coursed through the fault until overflowing and forming the sinuous channel. Continued movement through the fault carved a trough up to the overflow point.

The arrows indicate the downhill grades. Though this caption mentions groundwater, it is far more likely that the “runny fluid” was lava, as shown by the overview map below.
» Read more

One comment

Sightseeing near Starship’s candidate Martian landing sites

2:21 pm

An interesting mesa near Starship's Martian landing zone
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image takes us sightseeing in the region on Mars that SpaceX has chosen for its prime landing zone for its Starship spaceship. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on May 29, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), and shows a 465-foot-high unusually shaped mesa in this region.

The full resolution inset at the bottom of the picture focuses at the strange tilted layers on the southern slope of this mesa. Apparently the layers at this spot were pushed sideways so they lie significantly angled to the horizontal. Though it isn’t clear from this picture, it is possible that the mesa itself is made up of similar tilted layers, hidden below the surface. We can see the tilt only on the mesa’s southern flank because erosion has apparently exposed it.

Note also the black stain that surrounds the mesa. Though this might be caused by wind distributing dust, such stains have also been seen at a location where scientists suspect an inactive hot spring might exist, as well as another location where there may have been relatively recent volcanic activity.

Is this stain caused by any of these processes? In situ exploration would probably be necessary to find out. And we may soon actually have spaceships landing here in the relatively near future with the capability to do this.
» Read more

One comment

Returning to Mars’ glacier country

3:21 pm

Overview map

Returning to Mars' glacier country
Click for original image.

Today’s cool image illustrates again why I rail against those who still claim Mars is dry. The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on June 2, 2025 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

The picture was labeled simply as a “terrain sample” by the MRO camera team, which almost always signifies that it was taken not as part of any specific science research project or by request by a scientist, but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When such a gap-filler picture is required, the team tries to pick interesting features in that time frame, but don’t always succeed.

In this case, that time frame placed MRO over the northern mid-latitudes and a region I label “glacier country” because practically every picture taken in this region shows glacial features. This picture is no exception. The white dot in the overview map above marks the location, in the Protonilus Mensae area of the 2,000-mile-long strip of glaciers. The arrow in the picture itself shows the downward grade of the glacial flow. The small 2,000-foot-wide crater appears as if the impact occurred on soft ice, and the stippled terrain surrounding it appears to resemble the feature geologists have labeled “brain terrain”, a surface feature unique to Mars and associated with near surface ice, though its exact formation process is not yet understood.

Nor have I cherry-picked this image to prove my point. Its glacial-like features are very typical for this region of Mars. Note for example the inset with the larger crater to the northeast. It appears almost buried by this glacial material, which has poured through the gap in its southwest quadrant to fill it. A close look at all the low lying terrain shows similar glacial-like flows.

Mars is surely not a paradise. It is bone-chillingly cold almost all the time. Its atmosphere is so thin and lacking in oxygen you would quickly suffocate if you tried to breath it. But the data continues to suggest that the red planet has ample supplies of near-surface ice outside of its dry tropics. All future colonists will need to do is dig a bit and process the water out.

One comment

Another interstellar object identified entering the solar system

11:44 am

A11pl3Z's path through the solar system

Astronomers think they have identified another interstellar object that is now entering the solar system.

The dim space rock is currently at about magnitude 18.8. Our new visitor, A11pl3Z, will get its closest to the sun – at about 2 astronomical units (AU), or twice as far as Earth is from the sun – in October. As it reaches perihelion – its closest point to the sun – it should be moving at about 68 km/s relative to the sun, or at about 152,000 miles per hour.

The object’s calculated path through the solar system, shown by the blue line in the graphic to the right, as well as the object’s high speed, are why the astronomers think it is interstellar in origin. Both facts suggest it is coming from beyond the Oort cloud.

This is the third such object discovered, after Oumuamua (whose nature remains somewhat unknown), followed by Comet 21/Borisov.

UPDATE: The object has now been renamed 3I/Atlas. The “3I” indicates it is the third interstellar object discovered, and “Atlas” refers to the discovering telescope survey.

12 comments

Astronomers discover supernovae that apparently exploded twice

10:55 am

Double detonation supernova
Click for original picture.

Using the ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, astronomers have discovered evidence suggesting a star apparently exploded twice went it went supernova several hundred years ago.

They detected this possibility by looking at the remnant of that blast, shown to the right. It shows a double halo, indicated by the blue and orange colors. The blue however is seen in both shells. As noted by the VLT’s press notice:

Calcium is shown in blue, and it is arranged in two concentric shells. These two layers indicate that the now-dead star exploded with a double-detonation.

This type of supernova, dubbed type 1a, occurs when a white dwarf sucks matter from its closely orbiting stellar companion. That material piles up on the surface of the star until it reaches critical mass and explodes, causing the supernova.

The two shells, suggesting a double detonation, fits a theory proposed for this process. From the paper’s abstract:

Our analysis reveals that the outer calcium shell originates from the helium detonation at the base of the outer envelope, while the inner shell is associated with the carbon–oxygen core detonation. This morphological distribution of intermediate-mass elements agrees qualitatively with the predicted signature of the double detonation of a sub-Chandrasekhar-mass white dwarf from a hydrodynamical explosion simulation.

In other words, the outer shell resulted from the explosion caused by the helium ripped from the companion star, with the resulting shockwave detonating the second explosion inside the white dwarf’s core.

That’s the theory at least. This data supports it, but it certainly doesn’t prove it.

One comment

China releases images of Earth and Moon, taken by its Tianwen-2 asteroid probe

9:40 am

Tianwen-2 images of the Earth and the Moon
For original images go here and here.

According to a report today in China’s state-run press, its Tianwen-2 asteroid sample return spacecraft is operating normally, and has successfully taken pictures of both the Earth and the Moon to test its instrumentation.

Those images are to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here.

The CNSA [China National Space Administration] said that the narrow-field-of-view navigation sensor equipped on the probe recently captured the images of Earth and the moon, demonstrating good functional performance.

The images released include a photograph of Earth obtained by Tianwen-2 when it was approximately 590,000 kilometers away from the planet, as well as a new photograph of the moon captured when it was about the same distance from the moon. After the images were transmitted back to the ground, they were processed and produced by scientific researchers.

The Tianwen-2 probe has currently been in orbit for over 33 days, at a distance from Earth exceeding 12 million kilometers, and it is in good working condition, the CNSA said.

The probe will take about a year to reach asteroid Kamo’oalewa, where it will fly in formation studying it for another year, during which time it will attempt to grab samples by two methods. One method is a copy of the touch-and-go technique used by OSIRIS-REx on Bennu. The second method, dubbed “anchor and attach,” is untried, and involves using four robot arms, each with their own drill.

3 comments

Baby stars illuminating the dust that surrounds them

10:03 am

Baby stars illuminating dark dust
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope showing the wispy bluish clouds made of dark dust that we can only see because the dust is illuminated by the reflected light from the five red and blue stars nearby. Think of the Moon, lit only by the reflected light of the Sun.

The photo however was not taken to study the clouds, but these baby stars, located in one of the closest star forming regions of the Milky Way.

GN 04.32.8 is a small part of the stellar nursery known as the Taurus Molecular Cloud. At only roughly 480 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, it’s one of the best locations for studying newly forming stars. This reflection nebula is illuminated by the system of three bright stars in the centre of this image, mainly the variable star V1025 Tauri in the very centre. One of those stars overlaps with part of the nebula: this is another variable star that is named HP Tauri, but is classified as a T Tauri star, for its similarity to yet another variable star elsewhere in the Taurus Molecular Complex. T Tauri stars are very active, chaotic stars at an early stage of their evolution, so it’s no surprise that they appear in a prolific stellar nursery like this one! The three stars are also named HP Tau, HP Tau G2 and HP Tau G3; they’re believed to be gravitationally bound to each other, forming a triple system.

Eagle-eyed viewers might notice the small, squashed, orange spot, just left of centre below the clouds of the nebula, that’s crossed by a dark line. This is a newly-formed protostar, hidden in a protoplanetary disc that obstructs some of its light. Because the disc is edge-on to us, it’s an ideal candidate for study. Astronomers are using Hubble here to examine it closely, seeking to learn about the kinds of exoplanets that might be formed in discs like it.

As beautiful as this image is, it is that tiny protostar near the bottom that likely attracts the most interest from astronomers.

3 comments
1 2 3 4 5 … 30