A new NASA and Durham University simulation puts forth a different theory of the Moon’s origin – the Moon may have formed in a matter of hours, when material from the Earth and a Mars sized-body were launched directly into orbit after the impact. The simulations used in this research are some of the most detailed of their kind, operating at the highest resolution of any simulation run to study the Moon’s origins or other giant impacts.
Welcome to one of the most active galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood, NGC 1569. This starburst galaxy creates stars at a rate 100 times faster than in our own galaxy, the Milky Way!
Scientists represented information in this Hubble image with sound to create a beautiful sonification with a bottom to top scan. Brighter light is higher pitched and louder. The three color channels used to process this image are each given their own pitch range, with red representing lower pitches, green in medium pitches, and blue in high pitches.
Sonification credits: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed primarily to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too early, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This is expected to enable a broad range of investigations across the fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.
The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) led JWST’s development in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Maryland managed telescope development, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore on the Homewood Campus of Johns Hopkins University operates JWST, and the prime contractor was Northrop Grumman. The telescope is named after James E. Webb, who was the administrator of NASA from 1961 to 1968 during the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.
The James Webb Space Telescope was launched on 25 December 2021 on an Ariane 5 rocket from Kourou, French Guiana, and arrived at the Sun–Earth L2 Lagrange point in January 2022. The first image from JWST was released to the public via a press conference on 11 July 2022. The telescope is the successor of the Hubble as NASA’s flagship mission in astrophysics.
A star’s death throes have so violently disrupted its planetary system that the dead star left behind, called a white dwarf, is siphoning off debris from both the system’s inner and outer reaches. This is the first time astronomers have observed a white dwarf star that is consuming both rocky-metallic and icy material, the ingredients of planets.
Archival data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other NASA observatories were essential in diagnosing this case of cosmic cannibalism. The findings help describe the violent nature of evolved planetary systems and can tell astronomers about the makeup of newly forming systems.
Our Milky Way galaxy is haunted. The vast gulf of space between the stars is plied by the dead, burned-out and crushed remnants of once glorious stars. These black holes cannot be directly seen because their intense gravity swallows light. Like legendary wandering ghosts, their presence can only be deduced by seeing how they affect the environment around them.
The majestic spiral galaxy NGC 1300’s arms hold blue clusters of young stars, pink clouds of star formation, and dark lanes of dust.
To represent this image with sound, scientists assigned louder volume to brighter light. Light farther from the center is pitched higher as a counterclockwise radar scans across the galaxy. NGC 1300 resides nearly 70 million light-years away in the constellation Eridanus.
Video credit: NASA Goddard
Sonification credits: SYSTEM Sounds (M. Russo, A. Santaguida)
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