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Keeping An Eye On Gaia
Gaia, ESA's long-anticipated mission to map the stars of our galaxy (as well as do a slew of other cool science things) is now tucked comfortably in its position in orbit around Earth-Moon L2, a...
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Dazzling New Views of a Familiar Cluster
Wow. It’s always amazing to get new views of familiar sky targets. And you always know that a “feast for the eyes” is in store when astronomers turn a world-class instrument towards a familiar...
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ESO’s La Silla Observatory Reveals Beautiful Star Cluster “Laboratory”
Any human being knows the awe-inspiring wonder of a splash of stars against a dark backdrop. But it takes a skilled someone to truly appreciate a distant object viewed through an eyepiece. Your gut...
View ArticleWeekly Space Hangout – Sept. 26, 2014: So Wait, Do Black Holes Exist or Not?!?
Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain)Guests: Morgan Rehnberg (cosmicchatter.org / @cosmic_chatter) Alessondra Springmann (@sondy) Ramin Skibba (@raminskibba) Brian Koberlein (@briankoberlein) Jason Major...
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VLTI Detects Exozodiacal Light Around Exoplanets
If you've ever stood outside after twilight has passed, or a few hours before the sun rises at dawn, then chances are you've witnessed the phenomenon known as zodiacal light. This effect, which looks...
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What Is This Empty Hole In Space?
What may appear at first glance to be an eerie, empty void in an otherwise star-filled scene is really a cloud of cold, dark dust and molecular gas, so dense and opaque that it obscures the distant...
View ArticleAstronomy Cast Ep. 366: HARPS Spectrograph
Almost all the planet hunting has been done from space. But there’s a new instrument installed on the European Southern Observatory’s 3.6 meter telescope called the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet...
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Rare Images of Red Sprites Captured at ESO
At the ESO's observatories located high in the Atacama Desert of Chile, amazing images of distant objects in the Universe are captured on a regular basis. But in January 2015, ESO photo ambassador Petr...
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Two Stars On A Death Spiral Set To Detonate As A Supernova
Two white dwarfs circle around one other, locked in a fatal tango. With an intimate orbit and a hefty combined mass, the pair is ultimately destined to collide, merge, and erupt in a titanic explosion:...
View ArticleWeekly Space Hangout – Oct 2, 2015: Water on Mars, Blood Moon Eclipses, and...
Host: Fraser Cain (@fcain)Guests:Morgan Rehnberg (cosmicchatter.org / @MorganRehnberg ) Pamela Gay (cosmoquest.org / @cosmoquestx / @starstryder) Kimberly Cartier (@AstroKimCartier ) Brian Koberlein...
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The Bright Spots on Ceres are Blinking
All right, maybe not blinking like a flashlight (or a beacon on the tippity-top of a communication tower—don't even start that speculation up) but the now-famous "bright spots" on the dwarf planet...
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Three New Earth-sized Planets Found Just 40 Light-Years Away
Three more potentially Earthlike worlds have been discovered in our galactic backyard, announced online today by the European Southern Observatory. Researchers using the 60-cm TRAPPIST telescope at...
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A Star Is About To Go 2.5% The Speed Of Light Past A Black Hole
Since it was first discovered in 1974, astronomers have been dying to get a better look at the Supermassive Black Hole (SBH) at the center of our galaxy. Known as Sagittarius A*, scientists have only...
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Very Large Telescope Images Of Jupiter Prepare Us For Juno Arrival
Launching back in 2011, NASA's Juno mission has spent the past five years traversing the gulf that lies between Earth and Jupiter. When it arrives (in just a few days time!), it will be the second...
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ESO Announcement To Address Reports Of Proxima Centauri Exoplanet
For years, exoplanet hunters have been busy searching for planets that are similar to Earth. And when earlier this month, an unnamed source indicated that the European Southern Observatory (ESO) had...
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Potentially Habitable Exoplanet Confirmed Around Nearest Star!
For years, astronomers have been observing Proxima Centauri, hoping to see if this red dwarf has a planet or system of planets around it. As the closest stellar neighbor to our Solar System, a planet...
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Discovery Of A Nearby Super Earth With Only 5 Times Our Mass
Red dwarf stars have proven to be a treasure trove for exoplanet hunters in recent years. In addition to multiple exoplanets candidates being detected around stars like TRAPPIST-1, Gliese 581, Gliese...
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Quasar Light Confirms Consistency Of Electromagnetism Over 8 Billion Years
Back in November, a team of researchers from the Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Cambridge published some very interesting findings about a galaxy located about 8 billion light...
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ESO Survey Shows Dark Matter to be Pretty “Smooth”
Dark Matter has been something of a mystery ever since it was first proposed. In addition to trying to find some direct evidence of its existence, scientists have also spent the past few decades...
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A “Breakthrough” to Search for Planets in Closest Star System to Earth
Ever since the European Southern Observatory (ESO) announced that they had discovered an exoplanet in the nearby system of Proxima Centauri, there have been a lot of questions about this exoplanet. In...
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