On Wednesday, December 7, skywatchers around the world were treated to a celestial spectacle as the full moon eclipsed Mars in the night sky. The rare event, known as a lunar occultation, refers to one celestial body – in this case Mars – appearing to disappear or hiding behind another – in this case the …
Rare full moon Mars eclipse impresses astronomers with occultation (video) Read More »
Enlarge / Artist’s impression of GRB 211211A. The kilonova and gamma burst is on the right. Aaron M. Geller/Northwestern/CIERA A year ago, astronomers discovered a powerful gamma-ray burst (GRB) lasting nearly two minutes, dubbed GRB 211211A. Now, this unusual event upends the long-held assumption that longer GRBs are the distinctive signature of a massive stellar …
New kilonova causes astronomers to rethink what we know about gamma-ray bursts Read More »
humanity is improve a planetary defense – at least against external threats from outer space, as long as they’re just dumb rocks that follow the laws of physics. And a group of extraordinary humans proved it last week when the planetary defense community stepped in to accurately track and predict exactly where a relatively small …
Astronomers spot a small incoming asteroid and make a big breakthrough Read More »
Earlier this year, astronomers found an absolute monster of a galaxy. Hidden some 3 billion light-years away, Alcyoneus is a giant radio galaxy reaching 5 megaparsecs in space. It’s 16.3 million light-years long, and it is the largest known structure of galactic origin. This discovery sheds light on our poor understanding of these colossi and …
Astronomers spot the largest galaxy ever, and the scale will break your brain Read More »
It was an event not seen in over a decade: a sudden burst of energy launched from the center of a distant galaxy, bright enough to be visible 8.5 billion light-years away. . With a burst of light equivalent to more than 1,000 trillion suns, the flash was first detected by the Zwicky Transient Facility, …
A black hole tore apart a star and brought together astronomers from around the world Read More »
Enlarge / Illustration of a spaghetti star as it is sucked into a supermassive black hole during a tidal disturbance event (TDE). ESO/M. Cereal fairs Earlier this year, astronomers picked up an unusually bright signal in the X-ray, optical and radio regimes, dubbed AT 2022cmc. They have now determined that the most likely source of …
Astronomers capture black hole engulfing star in ‘hyper-feeding frenzy’ Read More »
NASA captures a ‘smiling’ sun NASA has shared a video taken by its Solar Dynamic Observatory showing dark spots on the sun, giving the illusion of a smile. (Credit: @NASASun/Twitter) A group of astronomers talk about the impact of a large satellite designed to connect directly to mobile phones. In a statement on Monday, the …
Huge satellite eclipses stars, confusing astronomers Read More »
Step out of the Milky Way for a moment and you might notice that the luminous disk of stars we call home has a strange distortion. Now, it looks like the rest of our galaxy is a little off as well. A new map of stars above and below the galactic plane shows that its …
The Milky Way’s star halo isn’t the neat sphere astronomers expected Read More »
