All's not as it appears, this tale has many twists -
but if I wasn't here documenting the story
would that mean that the plot did not exist?

— Peter Hammill

Universe Today

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Space and Astronomy News from Universe Today
Updated: 4 hours 32 min ago

Curiosity is Making Tracks Across the Surface of Mars

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 7:24pm

Images of Mars never cease to amaze. This latest image of NASA’s Curiosity Rover captured by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the rover as a dark speck and the end of a long trail of tracks. It was rattling along at a speed of 0.16 km/h across the Gediz Vallis Channel and was headed towards a region that could have been formed by water billions of years ago. The weather on Mars won’t allow the tracks to persist though so they are likely to last for only a few months.

Categories: Astronomy

Quality Of 3D Printing With Lunar Regolith Varies Based On Feedstock

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 4:00pm

Lately, there's been plenty of progress in 3D printing objects from the lunar regolith. We've reported on several projects that have attempted to do so, with varying degrees of success. However, most of them require some additive, such as a polymer or salt water, as a binding agent. Recently, a paper from Julien Garnier and their co-authors at the University of Toulouse attempted to make compression-hardened 3D-printed objects using nothing but the regolith itself.

Categories: Astronomy

200 Solar Orbiter Photos Turned into a High-Resolution Image of the Sun

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 2:57pm

There's no better word for this image of the Sun than Spectacular, which means something impressive, dramatic, or remarkable that creates a spectacle or visual impact. It comes from the Latin word spectaculum, which means a show, spectacle, or public exhibition. Ancient Romans would agree with the word choice if you could somehow show it to them.

Categories: Astronomy

An Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Found With Almost No Dark Matter

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 1:21pm

An Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Found With Almost No Dark Matter

Categories: Astronomy

Here’s How the Universe Can Make Dimethyl Sulfide in Interstellar Space. No Life Required.

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 9:11am

Dimethyl Sulfide (DMS) has been in the news again, this time for its discovery in the atmosphere of the hycean world K2-18b as a potential biosignature. In an interesting twist, astronomers have also detected DMS in comets and in giant molecular clouds. It shows there must be an abiotic way for this chemical to be produced. A team of researchers have studied DMS and developed different gas phase reactions that could produce this chemical and explain its presence that doesn’t require life.

Categories: Astronomy

Almost a Quarter of all Lunar Ejecta Eventually Hits Earth

Fri, 04/25/2025 - 7:56am

Take a look at the Moon through binoculars or a telescope and its clear that its been bombarded through history by space rocks. Some of the impacts are energetic enough that debris is ejected from the surface facer than the Moon’s escape velocity. Much of this rock finds its way to Earth and now, a team of researchers announce they have been simulating these events. They simulated asteroid impacts and tracked the debris that escaped the lunar surface and were surprised at just how much of the ejecta found its way to Earth.

Categories: Astronomy

We Need a Rapid Asteroid Response Mission

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 6:03pm

Looking up at the night sky, it’s reasonable to believe that our Solar System is largely empty after all the only things easily visible are the planets. In reality its a cosmic shooting gallery and it’s just a matter of time before an asteroid slams into Earth. A team of scientists propose that space agencies develop a rapid-response flyby reconnaissance mission to reach potential asteroid threats within 2.5 years of detection.

Categories: Astronomy

World's Largest Solar Telescope Gets the World's Largest Spectro-Polarimeter

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 4:23pm

Telescopes can have more than one sensor. Those sensors can utilize some of the same infrastructure, like lenses and mirrors, and specialize in collecting different data. A good example of this is the Inouye Solar Telescope (IST). It is the largest solar telescope in the world, with a primary mirror diameter of 4 meters. It also has five separate instruments, four of which are currently in operation. The latest of these to come online is the Visible Tunable Filtergraph (VTF), which just collected its first light according to a press release by the Max Planck Institute for Solar Research, one of the project partners.

Categories: Astronomy

Half the Stellar Mass in the Universe Formed During Cosmic Noon

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 3:28pm

About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the first atoms formed. The first light of what we now see as the cosmic microwave background was released, and the primordial hydrogen and helium grew cold and dark. The cosmos entered a dark age for about 100 million years until the first stars and galaxies started to form. You could say the rise of galaxies marked cosmic morning. But star formation didn't really kick into gear for another 2-3 billion years, during what astronomers call cosmic noon. This period can be difficult to observe, but a new study gives us an unprecedented view of this epoch.

Categories: Astronomy

Vera Rubin Could Triple the Number of Known Satellite Galaxies Around the Milky Way

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 2:10pm

The Milky Way has more than 30 known satellite galaxies. The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are the largest and most well-known; other lesser-known ones, like the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy, are also on the list. Astronomers think there are many more small satellites that are difficult to detect but essential in understanding the Milky Way. The Vera Rubin Observatory should help astronomers find many more of them.

Categories: Astronomy

Prebiotic Molecules are Forming in Space

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 12:03pm

We associate complex chemistry with planets or other bodies, where energy and matter interact in dynamic associations. But as science advances, researchers are finding prebiotic chemistry in a wider variety of places, including in space itself. New research shows that some prebiotic chemicals, part of the recipe for life itself, can form in the cold vacuum of space.

Categories: Astronomy

The World's Largest Telescope is Coming Together

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 10:51am

I do love the names of the European Southern Observatory installations. You are familiar I’m sure with the Very Large Telescope but have you heard of the Overwhelmingly Large Telescope? It was intended to house a 100m mirror but never got commissioned due to its complexity. There is however, an Extremely Large Telescope with a 39 metre mirror and its due to be completed in a couple of years. This image was taken on 12 April 2025 by photographer Eduardo Garcés showing its progress.

Categories: Astronomy

Catch a Rare Lunar-Planetary Grouping Friday Morning

Thu, 04/24/2025 - 9:43am

Occasionally, the Universe seems to literally smile upon us. If skies are clear Friday morning on April 25th, early rising sky watchers may witness a rare scene, as brilliant Venus and fainter Saturn form the ‘eyes’ and a thin crescent Moon nearby completes the ‘grin’ low to the east at dawn.

Categories: Astronomy

A Novel Concept for a Multiplanetary Crewed Mission to Mars and Ceres

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 6:25pm

In a recent paper, a team of commercial space engineers proposed a Human-Crewed Interplanetary Transport Architecture (HUCITAR) to explore Mars and Ceres in a single journey. Their ambitious plan envisions six astronauts spending 4 years and seven months exploring these bodies, which could be ready to launch by 2035.

Categories: Astronomy

Seeing the Waves that Make the Sun's Corona So Hot

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 6:09pm

If you happen to be enjoying a sunny day, thank the bright surface of the Sun, known as the photosphere. At a piping hot temperature of about 5,800 K, the photosphere provides nearly all the sunlight Earth receives. But for all its glorious radiance, the photosphere isn't the hottest part of the Sun. That award goes to the diffuse outer atmosphere of the Sun known as the corona, which has a temperature of more than a million Kelvin. Parts of the corona can be as hot as 20 million Kelvin, which is hotter than the Sun's core. Of course, the big mystery is why the corona is so hot.

Categories: Astronomy

Dazzling Pictures Celebrate Hubble Space Telescope's 35 Years in Orbit

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 3:46pm

This week brings the Hubble Space Telescope's 35th birthday — but instead of getting presents, the Hubble team is giving out presents in the form of four views of the cosmos, ranging from a glimpse of Mars to a glittering picture of a far-out galaxy.

Categories: Astronomy

Scientists Ask For Help Classifying Galaxies From the Cosmic Noon

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 3:45pm

Data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is coming in hot and heavy at this point, with various data streams from multiple instruments being reported in various papers. One exciting one will be released shortly in the Astrophysical Journal from researchers at the University of Kansas (KU), where researchers collected mid-infrared images of a part of the sky that holds galaxies from the time of the "cosmic noon" about 10 billion years ago. Their paper describes this survey and invites citizen scientists to help catalogue and classify some of their findings.

Categories: Astronomy

How Can the Sun Become a Telescope?

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 3:28pm

How can we turn the sun into a telescope?

Categories: Astronomy

This Distant Exoplanet is Melting Away and Leaving a Comet-like Tail

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 1:48pm

If we need more evidence that our Solar System is not representative of other solar systems, take a look at BD+05 4868. It's a binary star consisting of a K-dwarf and an M-dwarf about 140 light-years away. It's not just the binary star sets the system apart from ours. A small rocky planet is so close to the primary star that it's being vaporized, leaving a trail of debris like a comet.

Categories: Astronomy

However Life Got Started on Earth, it Didn't Take Long

Wed, 04/23/2025 - 10:42am

At some early point in Earth's history, a collection of increasingly complex chemicals performed a new trick. They transformed themselves somehow into an energy-producing and self-replicating cell. The timing of this critical moment in Earth's history is hidden behind the haze of billions of years.

Categories: Astronomy