Astronomy

NASA astronaut candidate Adam Fuhrmann prepares for a training flight aboard NASA’s WB-57 aircraft.

As cases of a parasite-caused disease tied to shredded iceberg lettuce continue to climb, the nation’s top public health body is warning of a new foodborne illness

A proof-of-principle experiment used concentrated sunlight to produce entangled photons

A million-dollar math mystery may someday be resolved in a physics lab. A new study brings this vision one step closer.

Fauci previously served as the chief medical officer to President Joe Biden and led the U.S. COVID pandemic response effort during the first Trump administration

This flu shot, mFlusiva, was shown in a clinical trial to be up to 27 percent more effective than a standard flu jab

All you really need for stargazing is your eyes and dark skies . . . right?

The post All I Need for a Night of Stargazing Is... appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

New work shows how different storm types are shifted by cities’ microclimates

Here’s everything you need to know about this eclipse, from the weather to the best viewing locations

Video: 00:00:06

The footage shows the simultaneous deployment of two landing legs from the ExoMars landing platform, in two sequential pairs.  

The legs travel stowed on the spacecraft through deep space, and are automatically deployed in pairs in less than a second using non-explosive actuators, just after the front shield is jettisoned. This is a crucial step in the landing module’s preparation for touchdown.  

The tests used a full-scale model of the landing platform at the Thales Alenia facilities in Turin, Italy. The four legs replicate the structure and dimensions of those that will fly to Mars. 

The landing legs are crucial gear for the safe touchdown of ESA’s ExoMars Rosalind Franklin rover mission in 2030, alongside parachutes and engines that will slow the spacecraft’s descent onto Mars.   

While Thales Alenia Space is the industrial lead of the mission, Airbus provides the landing platform.  Teams from the Sener company, based in Spain, designed and built the landing legs. 

Image:

This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel).

Spanning roughly 260 light-years, the nebula is home to an incredible collection of objects, including the Cosmic Cliffs revealed in the first-ever Webb image release. The Carina Nebula is also the nearest high-mass star-forming region that allows astronomers to study the full range of star formation. This nebula houses some of the most massive stars in our galaxy as well as tens of thousands of protostars, offering a valuable opportunity to understand how stars shape their neighbourhoods.

The feature highlighted in today’s image, aptly called the Treasure Chest, looks right at home in this celestial sculpture garden. The Treasure Chest is what’s known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail. These clouds often somewhat resemble comets, but the Treasure Chest looks distinctly like a wooden chest with its lid wide open.

However, this chest doesn’t contain jewels or gold coins, but instead a compact cluster of young stars. These stars are responsible for the otherworldly glow coming from within the Treasure Chest, revealed by Webb’s sensitive Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Researchers estimate that the Treasure Chest’s cluster contains about 70 stars, the most massive of which is a rare O-type star roughly 19 times as massive as the Sun.

The star cluster is likely around 1.3 million years old, though earlier estimates found it to be as young as just 100 000 years old. Because of its youth, the cluster is still deeply embedded within the dusty clouds of the Treasure Chest. The individual stars in the cluster are wrapped up in dust as well; astronomers have found evidence that many of these stars are surrounded by circumstellar discs. Over time, the brilliant starlight from these young stars will dissipate the surrounding cloud and reveal the entire cluster.

The key to the Treasure Chest’s sculptural shape lies outside this image: just 39 light-years to the northwest, as measured on the sky, sits Eta Carinae, the most luminous object in the entire Carina Nebula. Eta Carinae is a star system containing at least two stars, one of which is 100 times as massive as the Sun. This star alone is about 5 million times as luminous as the Sun. Adding to this intense radiation is the nearby star cluster Trumpler 16, which also contains several extremely hot massive stars.

With Webb, astronomers have carried out an observing programme (#5408; PI: Reiter) dedicated to studying how young stars in the Carina Nebula collect gas from their surroundings and expel it through outflows.

[Image Description: A region of space filled with bright stars and clouds of gas. In the centre, the densest clouds form the shape of a chest with its lid open. The chest appears to glow from within. At its base it breaks apart into long pillars of thick gas. Many of the gas clouds in the background are dark orange globules, while others form large, pale hazes. A few brightly shining stars lie in the foreground, the biggest and brightest in front of the chest’s lid.]

• Release on esawebb.org

It may be time to rethink our relationship with the sweet stuff

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Engineers connect the Orion crew and service modules for the Artemis III mission inside the Neil A. Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Musk outlined his vision to investors after SpaceX posted a $542-million loss from its space launch sector in its first quarter as a public company

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With a new Moon in play, skywatchers anticipate a fine Perseid performance this year.

The post A Perfectly Timed Perseid Meteor Shower appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

Scientists observing the Sun with the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope have caught a wave-like shape that's never been seen on the Sun's visible surface.

The post Inouye Solar Telescope Sees the Sun Closer Than Ever appeared first on Sky & Telescope.