Good-bye Spitzer. We’ll Miss You But We Won’t Forget You.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has reached the end of its life. Its mission was to study objects in the infrared, and it excelled at that since it was launched in 2003. But every mission has an end,...
View ArticleThis is the Final Picture NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope
NASA has just released a mosaic of the California Nebula, which was created from the final images snapped by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The post This is the Final Picture NASA’s Spitzer Space...
View ArticleSupermassive Black Hole Orbits an Even More Massive Black Hole, Crashing...
Recent observations by the now-retired Spitzer mission have led to accurate predictions OJ 287, a blazar that contains a supermassive black hole orbited by another black hole. The post Supermassive...
View ArticleDo Hot Jupiters Form Close in, or Do They Migrate? A Newly-Discovered Planet...
The recent discovery of a very young gas giant could offer clues about how "Hot Jupiters" form and whether or not they migrate over time. The post Do Hot Jupiters Form Close in, or Do They Migrate? A...
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Citizen Scientists Discover a new Feature in Star Formation: “Yellowballs”
AI is often touted as being particularly good at finding patterns amongst reams of data. But humans also are extremely good at pattern recognition, especially when it comes to visual images. Citizen...
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Apparently, This Nebula Looks Like Godzilla. Do you see it?
We’ve written often about how pareidolia — the human tendency to see faces or other features in random images — works its magic across the cosmos. There’s the famous face on Mars, Bigfoot on Mars, and...
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Hubble has Characterized 25 Hot Jupiters. Here’s What we Know so far
Hot Jupiters are giant exoplanets – even more massive than Jupiter – but they orbit closer to their star than Mercury. When they were first discovered, hot Jupiters were considered oddballs, since we...
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Astronomers Find an Earth-Sized World That May Be Carpeted in Volcanoes
Astronomers think they’ve found an extrasolar planet covered in volcanoes like Jupiter’s moon Io, but this world is about the same size as Earth. Designated LP 791-18 d, the planet is probably tidally...
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Could We Resurrect the Spitzer Space Telescope?
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope served the astronomy community well for 16 years. From its launch in 2003 to the end of its operations in January 2020, its infrared observations fuelled scientific...
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JWST and Chandra Team Up for a Stunning View of Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A
NASA’s long-lived Chandra X-ray Observatory teamed up with JWST for the first time, producing this incredibly detailed image of the famous supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. JWST first looked at the...
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