Tech NewsSploid

An Airline Pilot Captured This Beautiful Timelapse Footage of the Milky Way

As a passenger on an airplane, it’s not easy to shoot footage from your plane’s tiny window. But when you’re the pilot, with a large window to watch the night sky, you it’s possible to capture some amazing aerial footage of the Milky Way. This timelapse footage provides an incredible view of the Milky Way, … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Mind-Blowing Stellar Explosion Is a Beautiful Mess

When it comes to cool space pictures, supernovae get all the credit. After all, who doesn’t love a good star death? But new images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile reveal a stunning star birth that gives those supernova snaps a run for their money. It looks just like a firework, and … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

These Stars Had the Messiest Divorce in the Galaxy

The marital feuds of strangers have long intrigued our degenerate species. It’s a timeless topic that keeps several magazines afloat, even if literally none of the details are true. But what most don’t know is that celebrities (and commoners) aren’t the only ones who get divorced—sometimes, actual stars do, too. About 540 years ago and … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Black Holes May Be Way More Murderous Than We Realized

Don’t get me wrong, black holes are cool but they’re also giant voids of terror: These gravitational abysses have been known to snack on stars in occurrences called Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs). It’s always the same horror story—an unsuspecting star wanders too close to a black hole, only to get ripped apart by the black … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

An Enormous Exoplanet Is Having a Strange Influence on Its Star

There’s a star about 370 light-years from here that’s pulsating in response to its unusually heavy planetary companion. It’s the first time that astronomers have seen this sort of interaction between a planet and its host star. “We thought that planets cannot really excite their stars, but we find that this one does.” A new … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

You Can Help Make the Next Great Exoplanet Discovery From Your Laptop

Calling all space cadets: Today, a group of researchers led by the Carnegie Institute of Science released an impressive database containing 61,000 so-called Doppler velocity measurements of 1,600 nearby stars. The team is graciously inviting you to use their data to find the next exoplanet. Go forth and become drunk with power. The data behind … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Giant Black Hole Set a Record for Longest-Ever Lunch

A typical lunch outing with friends lasts about an hour-and-a-half. If it’s bottomless brunch, maybe tack on a few more hours. But supermassive black holes don’t care for our human constructions of time—it turns out they’ll eat for a decade if they choose. New research, published on February 6th in Nature Astronomy, details the longest … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Watch This Star Tragically Die in a Fart Nebula

Perishing alone in space—in a gaseous cloud of stench—ranks pretty highly on the list of Terrible Ways to Die. Sadly, that was the fate of one unfortunate star trapped in the Calabash Nebula, nicknamed the “Rotten Egg Nebula” due to its high sulphur content. If you’ve ever smelled sulphur—or dog farts—you already understand the name. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Two Galaxies Got Into a Fight and the Result Was Breathtaking

A long time ago in two galaxies far, far away, there was quite the kerfuffle. New research suggests that about 200 million years ago, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located 160,000 lightyears from Earth, got into an intergalactic altercation with its younger sibling, the Small Magellanic Cloud. But the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Something Silent But Deadly Is Killing Galaxies

Across the universe, unsuspecting galaxies are literally getting the life sucked out of them. Though the culprit is still at large, a team of researchers at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Western Australia is working tirelessly to crack the case—and to restore law and order. After examining 11,000 galaxies using the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This May Be the Best Explanation Yet For That Mysterious ‘Alien Megastructure’

New research suggests that Tabby’s star—the celestial object voted most likely to host an alien megastructure—is acting weirdly because it recently annihilated an entire planet, and the shattered remains of that planet are now producing strange flickering effects. It’s probably the best theory we’ve heard so far. It’s not aliens. At least that’s the conclusion … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Stellar Explosion Could Be Visible In the Night Sky In 2022

It’s not often that a new body appears in the night sky—aside from meteors and the occasionally comet, things tend to look pretty much the same. Now, astronomers predict that a pair of stars so close they’re basically touching will collide and create a so-called red nova, resulting in a bright explosion visible to the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Incoming Star Could Spawn Swarms of Comets When It Passes Our Sun

For years, scientists have known that Gliese 710 will come excruciatingly close to our Solar System in about a million years. An updated analysis suggests this star will come considerably closer than we thought, during which time it’s expected to spawn dangerous cometary swarms. Gliese 710 is currently 64 light-years from Earth, but for all … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Star Is the Roundest Celestial Object Ever Measured

Stars are not perfect spheres owing to centrifugal force. But there’s a star about 5,000 light-years from here that scientists now say is the roundest natural object ever measured in the universe. A new study published in Science Advances identifies the star Kepler 11145123 as being the most spherically symmetrical object ever observed in space. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Our Best Glimpse Yet of a Triple Star System Being Born

Using the ALMA telescope, astronomers have captured an exceptionally clear image of a triple protostar system still in the early stages of development. The new image is providing fresh insights into multi-star systems and how they come into existence. This baby protostar system is called L1448 IRS3B, and it’s less than 150,000 years old—a minor … Continued

Tech NewsGadgets

This Upgraded Nikon Chills the Sensor for Clearer Shots of the Stars

Those long exposure photos of the night sky that capture details of our galaxy invisible to the naked eye come at a cost. The longer a camera’s sensor is active, the warmer it gets, adding unwanted electronic noise to an image. You can go shoot in the freezing temperatures of the arctic to solve the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The Largest 3D Map of the Galaxy Contains Over a Billion Stars

Some may call it excessive, unreasonable, exhibitionist. What kind of masochist wants to stare at a billion pinpricks of light all at once, anyway? Why, the scientifically inclined one, of course. The astronomer who’s hellbent on picking apart the universe and reducing your life to a clump of dust needs absurdly detailed star charts in … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Just Witnessed a Rare Stellar Rebirth For the First Time

At the heart of the Stingray Nebula some 2,700 light years from Earth lies a small, aging star known as SAO 244567. Astronomers have been observing it on and off for decades, and they can now confirm they’ve witnessed something amazing: a never-before-seen stellar rebirth. From 1971 to 2002, the surface temperature of SAO 244567 … Continued

Tech NewsSploid

Check Out How the Different Levels of Light Pollution Screws Us From Seeing Stars

It’s obvious to anyone with eyeballs that there ain’t no damn stars in the city, while there are about a gazillion and one out in the countryside. But what do the various gradations of light pollution actually look like? Sriram Murali pointed his camera to the night sky to show you the progression of light … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

A Zombie Star Just Went Thermonuclear

In 2009, a binary star that had been flaring up for years suddenly exploded, growing millions of times brighter in a cosmic blink. Now, after carefully studying the lead up to and aftermath of the extraordinary event, a team of Polish astronomers describes what happened in a new scientific paper. Basically, a zombie star charged … Continued