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

Tech NewsSploid

Awesome Video Compares the Size of Different Planets and Stars in the Universe

If you want to feel small and get a sense for the awesomely overwhelming scale of the universe and all of its planets and stars and empty space, watch this star size comparison video. It starts with our Moon and then sizes up to planets in our solar system in a line up while also … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The Terrifying Reason This Star Flickers Every Two Minutes

Some 380 light years away in the constellation Scorpius lies a star that has puzzled astronomers for over 40 years. Called AR Scorpii, the star flashes brightly and fades again every couple minutes, like a lightbulb on a dimmer switch. Now, astronomers have identified the cause of the flickering, and it’s a reminder that the … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

New 3D Map of the Universe Features a Whopping 1.2 Million Galaxies

The astronomical map you see here doesn’t depict stars, it shows galaxies—1.2 million of them, to be exact, a new record for astronomers. This extraordinary new 3D scan of the universe provides yet more evidence that a mysterious substance known as dark energy is likely causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. The … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Recorded This Eerie Music From a 13-Billion-Year-Old Star

Space is not the soundless vacuum movies would have us believe. In fact, judging by these eerie recordings of the music being thrown off by the oldest stars in the Milky Way, space actually sounds like a bit of a party. The recordings were created by a team of scientists led by Andrea Miglio of … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

The Sun Boils Like a Cauldron in This Dramatic Close-up

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory just released a stunning video showing a pair of magnetic fields as they duel for supremacy on the surface of the sun. The video, shot in extreme ultraviolet light, highlights a small but increasingly active region on the stellar surface. Shot over the course of a single day (May 30, 2016), … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

An Optical Illusion Fooled Astronomers Into Thinking There Was an Extra Nebula Here for Almost a Decade

How many nebulas do you think are in this photo? Careful, the answer is not quite what it seems. When the Hubble snagged this photo back in 2007 for the ESA, the answer seemed simple: There was the one object on the left, and there was the other on the right. Since they were so … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Ribbon of Dust and Gas Will Become a Series of Stunning Stars

It may not look much, but this fine filament of matter will soon blossom into something bright and spectacular, as its constituent gases begin to burn as a new set of stars. This image was captured by the European Space Agency’s Herschel observatory, which is able to peer into far-flung reaches of the Milky Way. … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Finally Know What’s Behind this Mysterious Glowing Red Cloud

Look deeply into this glowing red cloud drifting beyond the edges of our galaxy. Pretty weird, right? The weirdest thing of all, though, is what it’s been hiding. The ESO just released this new image of a bank of red clouds (RCW 106) 12,000 light years away that astronomers finally managed to get a better … Continued

Tech News

We’re Marvelling At These Incredible Pictures Of The Night Skies

Last week, we were blown away by a photograph from Mike Mezeul II depicting a storm over White Sands National Monument. We looked in a bit more on Mezeul’s portfolio and were amazed at what we saw. Mezeul got his start as a photographer when he was fifteen: his father gave him a camera: I … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Doomed Stars Glisten Like Diamonds in Latest Hubble Photo

Behold Trumpler 14, a dazzling star cluster located 8,000 light-years from Earth. Situated within the Carina Nebula, it’s home to one of the highest concentrations of massive, bright stars in the Milky Way. But as spectacular as these stellar objects appear be, their majestic appearance comes at a price. This family of white-blue stars are … Continued

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David Bowie Has His Own Constellation Now

As the world still mourns the passing of David Bowie, we can take some comfort that he’s posthumously received the most appropriate tribute ever: a constellation named after him, shaped in his iconic lightning bolt. The MIRA Public Observatory in Brussels, Belgium, worked with a local radio station to register the constellation, which consists of … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Peer Inside a Beautiful Model of a Spinning Star

It may seem like some kind of delicate flower head, but you’re actually looking at the results of a computational model which is used to predict what happens inside a star when it spins quickly on its axis. Developed by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, this models depicts a star that’s about … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Our Sun Could Release Superflares As Powerful As a Billion Megaton Bombs

By studying a nearby sun-like star, astronomers have concluded that the Sun is capable of releasing solar flares a thousand times greater than anything previously recorded. Scientists say the chances of this are quite slim, but warn that such an event would threaten life on Earth. Astronomers have documented superflares before, but never in our … Continued

Tech NewsSploid

I wish the night sky shined and sparkled like this over every city in real life

Light pollution. It really screws up the view. It would be so great if the stars in the sky could still be seen over big metropolitan areas. But it doesn’t work like that. You have to go far away from civilization into deserts and nature to see the stars and cosmos the way they are … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

This Stormy Star Means Alien Life May Be Rarer Than We Thought

There’s a red dwarf about 35 light-years from here that’s spewing powerful, life crushing solar flares into space. These types of stellar objects are fairly common, leading to speculation that our galaxy is less habitable than we thought. Of the estimated 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy, about three-quarters are red dwarfs. That’s … Continued

Tech News

27 Mysterious and Magical Photos of Night

When the lights go out, everything we don’t see gets all that much more beautiful. Here are your photos of night. Winner: Quiet These were shot on a Canon SL1 with the kit lens 18-55mm. These were taken on the outskirts of Lake Del Valle Park around Livermore. ISO 400, f5.6, 20sec. I set my … Continued

ScienceSpace & Spaceflight

Astronomers Found a Million-Times-Brighter Aurora—18 Light Years Away

A team of astronomers has discovered the most powerful aurora ever observed. But unlike our own Northern Lights, this astronomical phenomenon can be found 18 light years away in the skies above the brown dwarf LSR J1835+3259. The international team of stargazers observed the distant aurora using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in New Mexico … Continued

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Hubble’s Portrait Of The Crowded Quintuplet Cluster

This latest image from the Hubble Space Telescope is utterly stunning: it’s of the Quintuplet Cluster, named for its five brightest stars. Up until 1990, we had no idea that this existed: because it’s so close to the center of the galaxy, dust has blocked our view of it. This image was taken by observing … Continued

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No, We Aren’t Heading Into a “Mini Ice Age”

Recent headlines are warning that the Earth will enter into a “mini ice age” in about 20 years because the sun is heading towards a period of very low output. Here’s why this scenario is extremely unlikely. Wouldn’t it be great if scientists could make their minds up? One minute they’re telling us our planet … Continued