SLS Launch Further Delayed – Following previous technical delays, the first Space Launch System (SLS) rocket returned to the safety of NASA’s Vehicle Assembly Building before the landfall of Hurricane Ian. After confirming that it suffered no damage, NASA announced they’re likely to make another launch attempt in November.… Continue reading.
New JWST Images – James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) astronomers have continued to release new images. Among them is a mosaic covering an area about eight times the size of Webb’s First Deep Field released in July. The mosaic was made for the CEERS program, which is surveying a fraction of one square degree of sky with JWST in various infrared wavelengths.… Continue reading.
Webb Observations Released – NASA released the first full-color images and spectra taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, that weren’t alignment or test images. The telescope operates in infrared, so for humans to be able to see Webb images, the wavelengths detected are shifted to visible light wavelengths such that they appear to be color images.… Continue reading.
JWST Survives Micrometeoroid – NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) team revealed that a micrometeoroid hit one segment of its primary mirror, causing a very slight degradation in its image. The impacting object was roughly the size of a dust particle, but still a bit larger than pre-launch estimates predicted should hit the mirror during the lifetime of the telescope.… Continue reading.
Milky Way Black Hole – An international collaboration of astronomers released the first detailed image of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, known as Sgr A*. Event Horizon Telescope consortium is the same that three years ago imaged the black hole at the center of galaxy M87, known as M87*.… Continue reading.
Milky Way Star Formation History – The sub giant phase of a star’s life occurs when nuclear fusion stopped in its core and it is on the way to becoming a red giant star. A sub giant star’s age can be calculated fairly precisely from measurable properties like its elemental composition.… Continue reading.
FRB Source Located – Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are powerful flashes of radio energy that last only milliseconds, and what causes them is not understood. Some of them repeat from the same source, but many do not. A research team led by scientists at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Amsterdam linked up twelve radiotelescope antennas around the world to obtain extreme location precision on one FRB repeater.… Continue reading.
DESI – The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) is only about 10 percent of the way through its five-year operation, but its team, led by astronomers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, has already produced the largest ever three-dimensional map of the Universe.… Continue reading.
Hydrogen Filament – A group of astronomers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has identified the radio signature of a giant filament of atomic hydrogen 3,900 light-years long and 130 light-years wide, located near the far side of our Milky Way galaxy.… Continue reading.
James Webb Space Telescope Launched – Shortly after noon local time, December 25, the Ariane 5 rocket carrying the James Webb Space Telescope lifted off from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guyana. The infrared telescope is now starting its month-long journey towards its ultimate home, orbiting Earth’s L2 Lagrange point, about a million miles away.… Continue reading.