-
io9Play this first-person shooter to help scientists find supernovae
Like first person shooters? Spent too many nights playing Halo, lining up another player between the cross-hairs for a headshot while sniping from the safety of a building across the map? That same, precious skill set can be used to help researchers when you join the Hunt for Supernovae. The Palomar Transient Factory is a … Continued
-
Tech News
The Moon Like You Have Never Seen It Before
I’m absolutely fascinated by this new image of the Moon, showing a unique angle that you will never ever seen from Earth: its north pole! It’s a really strange perspective of such a familiar object. . This unique image was composed from 983 images taken over one month of the Moon’s northern summer, showing the … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech News
Crowdsourcing The Solar Eclipse of 2017
Shutterbugs with eclipse photography experience should mark November 13, 2012 and August 21, 2017 on their calendars. Those are the dates for two solar eclipses and astronomers want to harness the power of the internet to record these events. The researchers are asking photographers to submit pictures of the eclipse and as many as one … Continued
By Kelly -
io9
The next NASA rover could bring the first microbes to Mars
There’s no way to be absolutely certain, but we’re pretty sure that no germs have ever survived the grueling journey from Earth to Mars. But the latest rover to explore the Red Planet might just take along some microscopic colonists. NASA takes a number of steps to ensure that the probes that reach the Martian … Continued
-
io9
Quite possibly the most beautiful photo of Saturn ever taken
This image looks like it can’t possibly be real, but it is. Taken back in 2006 when the Cassini spacecraft was orbiting the sixth planet, this photo captures a nighttime view of Saturn as light sparkles off of its rings. A NASA astronomer explains all the components that make up this beautiful image: First, the … Continued
-
io9
Thousands of white dwarf stars could theoretically explode at any moment
The whole point of white dwarfs is that they’re the remains of stars not big enough to go supernova. Or so we thought. Many of these stars are held together by their super-fast spins… and slowing down could mean an explosion. Yes, it’s pretty much the plot of the movie Speed, except with thousands of … Continued
-
io9Watch cosmic plasma jet slowly expand in 14-year time-lapse video
Most cosmic phenomena are so far away that we can’t see their movement or evolution over the course of a human lifetime. Every once in awhile, when conditions are just right, we get lucky. This is one of those times. This time-lapse video shows the evolution of a supersonic jet in the nebula-like structure HH … Continued
-
io9
Impossible star may hold a key to the beginning of the universe
As Moby once said, “We are all made of stars” — all the elements heavier than hydrogen, helium and lithium were formed in the solar furnaces of the original stars before being spewed forth into the universe to create everything else. But a newly analyzed star in the Leo constellation has characteristics that shouldn’t be … Continued
-
io9
Comet Garrard gets lost among 10,000 stars
Comet Garrard is blasting through the northern sky. Of course, it’s easy to lose track of one little comet when it’s passing through a giant star cluster. But no matter: you just have to look for the brightest, greenest one. The comet – designated C/2009 P1, if you’re feeling technical, has been slowly moving through … Continued
-
io9
These are the remains of an ancient river on Mars
This image reveals the dark sediments and worn path of what was once a river delta, connecting a river with its lake terminus. Though this river bed has been dry for eons, it’s proof that rivers once ran on Mars. Proof of rivers and lakes like this are not unheard of on Mars, but this … Continued
-
io9
What happens when one black hole eats another black hole?
It’s cannibalism…in space! You’re looking at an image of two recently discovered, absolutely colossal black holes currently battling it out at the heart of a galaxy named NGC3393. Well, “battling” may not be the right word — because one of them is eating the other. The two black holes in question are both believed to … Continued
-
Tech NewsThese Unprecedented Hubble Movies Just Left Me Speechless
When I first saw these never-before-seen time-lapse videos—captured over the course of 14 years by the Hubble Space Telescope—I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Hubble photos can be beautiful, but these videos just left me speechless. The videos show stellar jets firing at 440,000 miles (770,000 kilometers) an hour. Stellar jets are a product of … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Chinese Scientists Want to Lasso an Asteroid
Everybody knows the best method of dealing with dangerous asteroids—it’s called Bruce Willis. But what if said asteroid wasn’t on a collision course with us and we wanted to study, rather than explode, it? A team of Chinese researchers may have the solution. A team from Tsinghua University in Beijing, led by Hexi Baoyin, wants … Continued
-
Tech NewsVideo of the World’s First Realistic Simulation of the Creation of Our Galaxy
Astrophysicists from the University of Zurich working with UCSC’s astronomers have created the world’s first realistic simulation of the formation of the Milky Way. It’s amazing that all this clockwork perfection came out of such a galactic Charlie Foxtrot. The video—which follows the original announcement of the study—starts less than a million years after the … Continued
By Jesus Diaz -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightUnique Video Captures the Sun Changing Its Spots
We knew that sunspots change quite rapidly from photos, but this video shows how fast this phenomenon is. The video was made from visible light frames captured by the NASA SDO’s Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager. [NASA Goddard Flickr]
By Jesus Diaz -
ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The First Hi-Res Simulation of the Milky Way’s Formation
It took nine months and 1.4 million processor-hours of work from NASA’s Pleiades supercomputer but a group of researchers from UC Santa Cruz have discovered how, exactly, our galaxy was born. The Cold Dark Matter theory posits that right after the Big Bang, gravitational forces influenced the minute variations in density of dark matter, slowly … Continued
-
io9
Within these infrared clouds, absolute darkness reigns
This image taken by NASA’s Wise Satellite is in the infrared spectrum, meaning it can reveal the light that is normally hidden behind thick, dark clouds of gas. But some clouds are so dark that no light can get through. These are known as infrared dark clouds — they’re the black patches in the image … Continued
-
io9
What makes this strange space blob glow?
That green clump might not be much to look at, but it’s one of the rarest sights in the cosmos: a Lyman-alpha blob. They’re among the universe’s biggest structures, and only now are we starting to understand how they work. Lyman-alpha blobs are up to 400,000 light-years across, making them much larger than the diameter … Continued
-
io9
A destroyed star becomes a planet made of diamonds
An international research team has found an exoplanet made entirely of diamonds. Although this may seem glamorous, researchers think it is only the desolate remains of a star, robbed of its mass by its companion. Some time ago, a radio telescope picked up the repeated signal of a pulsar. A pulsar is a rapidly-spinning star … Continued