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Astronomy

Alien life

Have scientists really found signs of alien life on K2-18b?

This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet 2M1510 (AB) b’s unusual orbit around its host stars, a pair of brown dwarfs. The newly discovered planet has a polar orbit, which is perpendicular to the plane in which the two stars are travelling. Polar planets around single stars had been found before, as well as polar discs of gas and dust capable of forming planets around binary stars. But thanks to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) this is the first time we have strong evidence that such a planet actually exists in a polar orbit around two stars. The two brown dwarfs appear as a single source in the sky, but astronomers know there are two of them because they periodically eclipse each other. Using the UVES spectrograph on the VLT they measured their orbital speed, and noticed that their orbits change over time. After carefully ruling out other explanations, they concluded that the gravitational tug of a planet in a polar orbit was the only way to explain the motion of the brown dwarfs.

Astronomy

Weirdest Planetary System Ever? Meet the Planet That Spins Perpendicular to Its Stars

{"shape": [8200, 8200, 3]}

Alien life

Are aliens real? Here’s what the scientists think

January 16, 2025

Astronomy

China plans to put a flag on the moon in 2026 — one that flutters using electromagnetic forces

January 14, 2025

Astronomy

That super valuable asteroid worth 100 bajillion dollars? JWST images show it’s rusting

August 20, 2024

Astronomy

Astronomers use JWST to peer into the heart of the Crab Nebula

Astronomy

Astronomers discover oldest black hole — and it’s much larger than it should be

January 19, 2024

Astronomy

“Diamond rain” on icy planets has unexpected connection to magnetic fields

January 10, 2024

Astronomy

This rogue star traveled 10 billion years from outside the galaxy until it reached Milky Way’s heart

December 5, 2023

Astronomy

Mystery of missing exoplanets explained by shrinking atmospheres

November 20, 2023

View over Hollywood. Image credits: Flickr / Mike Knell.

Astronomy

Losing our dark skies is so problematic there’s now a name for it: noctalgia

September 20, 2023

An artist’s concept shows what exoplanet K2-18 b could look like. Image credits: NASA, CSA, ESA, J. Olmsted (STScI), Science: N. Madhusudhan (Cambridge University)

Astronomy

Webb telescope finds carbon-based molecules in the atmosphere of a water planet. Could this be a sign of life?

September 15, 2023

Artist's concept showing the exploration of the Kuiper Belt so far. Image credits: NASA.

Astronomy

Scientists believe an Earth-sized planet could be hiding in our own Solar System

September 4, 2023

Astronomy

Circumbinary solar systems — Second-ever “Tatooine” system discovered

Astronomy

JWST scouts incredibly old galaxies, from when the universe was just a baby

Astronomy

NASA’s Curiosity rover snaps first-ever pictures of “sun rays” on Mars

Astronomy

The night sky is getting brighter by nearly 10% each year — and this could absolutely ruin astronomy

January 19, 2023

Astronomy

NASA’s DART spacecraft sets sights on asteroid

September 12, 2022

Anthropology

Second asteroid could have also led to dinosaur extinction

August 25, 2022

Jupiter is the king of the solar system, more massive than all of the other solar-system planets combined. Although astronomers have been observing the gas-giant planet for hundreds of years, it still remains a mysterious world.

Astronomers don't have definitive answers, for example, of why cloud bands and storms change colors, or why storms shrink in size. The most prominent long-lasting feature, the Great Red Spot, has been downsizing since the 1800s. However, the giant storm is still large enough to swallow Earth.

The Red Spot is anchored in a roiling atmosphere that is powered by heat welling up from the monster planet’s deep interior, which drives a turbulent atmosphere. In contrast, sunlight powers Earth's atmosphere. From Jupiter, however, the Sun is much fainter because the planet is much farther away from it. Jupiter's upper atmosphere is a riot of colorful clouds, contained in bands that whisk along at different wind speeds and in alternating directions. Dynamic features such as cyclones and anticyclones (high-pressure storms that rotate counterclockwise in the southern hemisphere) abound.

Attempting to understand the forces driving Jupiter's atmosphere is like trying to predict the pattern cream will make when it is poured into a hot cup of coffee. Researchers are hoping that Hubble's yearly monitoring of the planet—as an interplanetary weatherman—will reveal the shifting behavior of Jupiter's clouds. Hubble images should help unravel many of the planet's outstanding puzzles. This new Hubble image is part of that yearly study, called the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy program, or OPAL.

Astronomy

Why does Jupiter lack a true ring structure?

Astronomy

New NASA alloy is 1000 times more durable than what’s currently used in spacecraft

Astronomy

How the cosmic web makes and breaks the formation of new stars

Astronomy

The moon has a new crater — this time, created by a rogue rocket

Alien life

The James Webb telescope could detect aliens by looking for signs of pollution

February 22, 2022

Astronomy

Scientists find a potentially habitable planet orbiting a dying star

February 11, 2022

Astronomy

The journey of galaxy clusters in billions of years

February 10, 2022 - Updated on February 12, 2022

Astronomy

Hubble spots black hole “giving birth” to new star

January 24, 2022

Astronomy

The longest lunar eclipse in nearly 600 years is happening tonight

November 18, 2021

An artist's rendition of the asteroid 2021 PH27 i inside Mercury's orbit. (CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva)

Astronomy

Astronomers discover the fastest orbiting asteroid

August 24, 2021

Features

What is gravitational lensing — and how it helped prove Einstein right

Astronomy

InSight maps Mars’ composition and chunky core for the first time

July 22, 2021 - Updated on October 16, 2023

ESO / L. Calçada

Astronomy

Neutron Stars Make Ant Hills Out of Mountains

July 19, 2021 - Updated on July 12, 2023

Astronomy

Scientists develop AI to identify holes in the Sun’s corona

Artist's view of a black hole-neutron star merger. (Carl Knox, OzGrav - Swinburne University)

Astronomy

Neutron Star and Black Hole’s Final Dance Observed for the First Time

Astronomy

Scientists peer back in time to find the birth of the first stars

June 25, 2021 - Updated on June 26, 2021

Astronomy

Chaotic Young Star System Holds the Key to Planet Formation

These images, taken with the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, show the surface of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse during its unprecedented dimming, which happened in late 2019 and early 2020. The image on the far left, taken in January 2019, shows the star at its normal brightness, while the remaining images, from December 2019, January 2020 and March 2020, were all taken when the star’s brightness had noticeably dropped, especially in its southern region. The brightness returned to normal in April 2020. (ESO/M. Montargès et al)

Astronomy

Astronomers Solve the Mystery of Betelgeuse’s ‘Great Dimming’

Astronomers have spotted a giant 'blinking' star towards the centre of the Milky Way, more than 25,000 light years away. An international team of astronomers observed the star, VVV-WIT-08, decreasing in brightness by a factor of 30, so that it nearly disappeared from the sky. While many stars change in brightness because they pulsate or are eclipsed by another star in a binary system, it's exceptionally rare for a star to become fainter over a period of several months and then brighten again. (Amanda Smith, University of Cambridge)

Astronomy

Blinking Giant Star is a Mystery at the Heart of the Milky Way

Astronomy

How did the Oort cloud form? A new simulation reveals its origins

Astronomy

Galactic neighbourhoods have an influence on stellar nurseries

Ten areas in the sky were selected as “deep fields” that the Dark Energy Camera imaged several times during the survey, providing a glimpse of distant galaxies and helping determine their 3D distribution in the cosmos.

Astronomy

Astronomers map over 100 million galaxies to crack dark matter and dark energy puzzle

May 28, 2021 - Updated on June 11, 2023

This image features a comet located in the outer reaches of the Solar System: comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS). (ESO/SPECULOOS Team/E. Jehin)

Astronomy

Comets have a heavy metal atmosphere

This image shows an artist’s impression of what the surface of the 2I/Borisov comet might look like. 2I/Borisov was a visitor from another planetary system that passed by our Sun in 2019, allowing astronomers a unique view of an interstellar comet. While telescopes on Earth and in space captured images of this comet, we don’t have any close-up observations of 2I/Borisov. It is therefore up to artists to create their own ideas of what the comet’s surface might look like, based on the scientific information we have about it. (SO/M. Kormesser)

Astronomy

Interstellar visitor 2I/Borisov is the most pristine comet ever observed

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, who produced the first ever image of a black hole released in 2019, has today a new view of the massive object at the centre of the Messier 87 (M87) galaxy: how it looks in polarised light. This is the first time astronomers have been able to measure polarisation, a signature of magnetic fields, this close to the edge of a black hole. (EHT Collaboration)

Astronomy

Black Hole Seen Clearly in Historic New Direct Image

March 24, 2021 - Updated on April 2, 2021

This image shows an artist’s impression of winds in Jupiter’s stratosphere near the planet’s south pole, with the blue lines representing wind speeds. These lines are superimposed on a real image of Jupiter, taken by the JunoCam imager aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. Jupiter’s famous bands of clouds are located in the lower atmosphere, where winds have previously been measured. But tracking winds right above this atmospheric layer, in the stratosphere, is much harder since no clouds exist there. By analysing the aftermath of a comet collision from the 1990s and using the ALMA telescope, in which ESO is a partner, researchers have been able to reveal incredibly powerful stratospheric winds, with speeds of up to 1450 kilometres an hour, near Jupiter’s poles.

Astronomy

Jupiter’s Supersonic Stratospheric Winds Make it a Unique Beast

Artist’s Impression of GJ 1132 b

Astronomy

The Exoplanet that grew a second atmosphere

This artist’s impression shows how the distant quasar P172+18 and its radio jets may have looked. To date (early 2021), this is the most distant quasar with radio jets ever found and it was studied with the help of ESO’s Very Large Telescope. It is so distant that light from it has travelled for about 13 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was only about 780 million years old. (ESO)

Astronomy

Astronomers have discovered the most distant radio signal ever

A Snapshot of Gliese 486b's journey around its parent star (Render Area)

Alien life

Nearby Super-Earth could be perfect for atmospheric investigation

Astronomy

Massive Black Hole Could Challenge Stellar Evolution Theories

February 18, 2021 - Updated on April 2, 2021

Astronomy

Astronomers found a giant cluster of galaxies from the early universe

February 10, 2021

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© 2007-2025 ZME Science - Not exactly rocket science. All Rights Reserved.