Category Archives: Astronomy

MADISON (WKOW) -- Looking up at the night sky and admiring the stars is a pastime one generation after another has enjoyed. Astronomers are now concerned an ambitious project to bring high-speed internet to every corner of the world will disrupt their work and clutter the dark skies.

Starlinkis a SpaceX project seeking to launch tens of thousands of satellites into space. The satellites are closer to earth than normal as that allows them to send down data more quickly.

However, the mesmerizing sight of trains of bright satellites hovering across the sky concerns astronomers, who say it's already a challenge to observe distant galaxies.

"I am excited by the promise of Starlink, having better access to broadband is really important now more than ever," said John Heasley, a member of Iowa County Astronomers. "I live in a rural part of the state where a lot of people don't have good connection to the internet."

Heasley moderates for the Iowa County Astronomers group, as well as the Driftless Stargazing page on Facebook. While he said he supports Starlink's mission, Heasley added he's concerned about the ongoing impact of SpaceX eventually launching more than 30,000 satellites.

"There could end up being thousands, tens of thousands of these satellites in orbit and they could interfere, they are interfering, with the ability of astronomers to do their research, both with visual light and with radiowaves as well," Heasley said.

The issue, according to astronomers, is that bright reflections from the sun bouncing off the satellites ruin the view of stars and galaxies, even with high-powered telescopes.

"Most of the objects astronomers are interested in are very faint," said UW-Madison Astronomy researcher, Ralf Kotulla. "It's like you're trying to paint some intricate pastel painting and then someone takes a big paintbrush full of black paints right over it."

The satellites are lower to the ground than normal ones because, the closer to the earth, the lower the latency, meaning less time to beam the signal back to the ground.

SpaceX, which did not respond to requests from 27 News, said it is making changes after hearing about astronomers' concerns. Heasley said a representative from the company was on a recent Zoom call with himself and other concerned astronomers.

The company said it plans to outfit future satellites with visors that will block much of the sun's reflection, which causes the brightness. SpaceX said it is also looking into ways to re-angle the satellites as they ascend into orbit so they don't reflect as much light back toward the earth.

"While that would go a long way, I don't think that's gonna mitigate the impact altogether," Kotulla said. "They're still there and you can still see them."

Heasley said he's hopeful the proposed changes will lessen the impact on astronomers' views. Both he and Kotulla said they hope SpaceX can find a solution that offers greater access to high-speed internet while not interfering with those finding our place in the universe -- and also preserving the simple act of looking up and admiring the stars.

"It's nice they're willing to work with us and I'm pretty sure SpaceX and the astronomy community, they have enough smart people there," Kotulla said. "Someone's gonna figure out a solution."

The most recent Starlink launch was set to happen earlier this month. However, much like the NASA crew launch scheduled to occur Wednesday, it was canceled due to bad weather. The Starlink launch is now expected to take place in early June; when it does happen, the satellites will be most visible just before dawn and after dusk.

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Starlink seeks to deliver global high-speed internet; astronomers say it's interfering with their work - WKOW

An international team of astronomers has solved the decades-old mystery of the missing matter long predicted to exist in the universe but never before detected. The researchers have now found all of the missing normal matter in the vast space between galaxies.

The discovery, published May 27 in Nature, was made by studying massive flashes of energy from deep space, called fast radio bursts.

For decades, we have unsuccessfully searched for this missing matter with our largest telescopes. The discovery and localization of fast radio bursts was the key breakthrough needed to solve this mystery, said corresponding author J. Xavier Prochaska, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz.

Lead author Jean-Pierre Macquart at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) in Australia said astronomers have been searching for the missing matter for almost 30 years.

We know from measurements of the big bang how much matter there was in the beginning of the universe, he said. But when we looked out into the present universe, we couldnt find half of what should be there. It was a bit of an embarrassment.

Macquart said the missing matter was found lurking in the vast emptiness between stars and galaxies. Intergalactic space is very sparse, he said. The missing matter was equivalent to only one or two atoms in a room the size of a normal office. So it's very hard to detect this matter using traditional techniques.

The researchers were able to directly detect the missing matter using the phenomenon of fast radio burstsbrief flashes of energy that appear to come from random directions in the sky and last for just milliseconds. Scientists dont know what causes them, but it must involve incredible energy, equivalent to the amount released by the sun in 80 years.

Macquart said the team detected the missing matter by using fast radio bursts as cosmic weigh stations.

The radiation from fast radio bursts gets spread out by the missing matter in the same way that you see the colors of sunlight being separated in a prism, he said. Weve now been able to measure the distances to enough fast radio bursts to determine the density of the universe. We only needed six to find this missing matter.

The missing matter in this case is baryonic or ordinary matterlike the protons and neutrons that make up all the elements in planets and stars. Its different from dark matter, which remains elusive and accounts for about 85 percent of the total matter in the universe.

The research team also pinned down the relationship between how far away a fast radio burst is and how the burst disperses as it travels through the universe.

"We've discovered the equivalent of the Hubble-Lemaitre Law for galaxies, only for fast radio bursts," Macquart said. "The Hubble-Lemaitre Law, which was discovered in the 1920s, underpins all measurements of galaxies at cosmological distances.

The fast radio bursts used in the study were detected using CSIROs Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) telescope, which is located in outback Western Australia. ASKAPs abilities were crucial to this study, said coauthor Ryan Shannon at Swinburne University.

ASKAP has both a wide field of view, about 60 times the size of the full moon, and can image in high resolution, he said. This means that we can catch the bursts with relative ease and then pinpoint locations to their host galaxies with incredible precision.

ASKAP is a precursor for the future Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. The SKA could observe large numbers of fast radio bursts, giving astronomers a new way to study the previously invisible structure in the universe.

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Universe's 'missing matter' finally found in the space between galaxies - UC Santa Cruz

Thousands of satellites orbit the Earth to study the planet, support communication and several other purposes. However, once these satellites reach their expiry time, they become space junk or space debris and can turn into a major hazard for other multi-million dollar satellites. Recently, Chinas mission Long March 5B fell into Earth in an uncontrollable mannerthis event once again raised a major alarm related to the space junk floating around in space.

To understand how the space debris gets accumulated and how harmful it is for satellites in space and for the Earth, we spoke to Dr. Abhay Deshpande, a Senior Scientist (Physicist) working for the Government of India. He is also the Honorary Secretary of Khagol Mandal, a non-profit collective of astronomy enthusiasts that organises various sky observation programs, lectures, and study tours.

What is space debris and how does it get accumulated in space?

The first-ever space launch was done in 1957 by the USSRs Sputnik. In the seventies, Europe, Japan, India and China started space launches and as a result, in the past 60 years humans have launched over 6,000 space vehicles to put nearly 10,000 satellites in space. Of these nearly 2,300 are operational while others have stopped working.

Once the satellites become defunct, they drift away from the orbit and slowly start to disintegrate and break into small pieces, which also orbit around the Earth. Some of these parts enter the atmosphere and burn while coming down, while the rest continue to orbit around Earth.

The leftover non-working satellites are around 5,500 or more. They constitute 8,800 tonnes of material in space.This is called space debris and it is a new type of pollution hazard that humanity is facing since the past two decades.

How harmful are these space debris to space assets? What are the chances of collision with other space objects or satellites?

Hubble solar cell impact damage

Space debris is a major challenge as the chances of collision are high. If there is a collision, then the outgoing satellite or space vehicle will be totally damaged. At present the chances of near-by passage of space debris to working satellites is 20,000 approaches per week. This will steadily climb up to 50,000 close-by per week by 2050. At the present rate of accumulation of debris, 1 collision per 5 years with a junk object of size over 10 cm is predicted around 2050. Such collisions will result in total destruction of the satellites or other spaceships.

In February 2009, debris from Russian defunct satellite Kosmos-2251 collided with Iridium-33 satellite, and the functional satellite was broken into more than 2,400 pieces. In May 2013, debris from another Kosmos-1966 devastated Argentinas CubeBug1 and Ecuadors Pegaso satellites. Last September, some debris was about to hit the European satellite Cryosat and it would have resulted in destruction similar to the scenes of the Gravity movie. But the warning system helped and ESA was able to move the Cryosat to safe heights to avoid the collision.

Recently, one of the largest space junk from Chinas mission Long March 5B fell into Earth in an uncontrollable manner. So what are the probabilities of such large space debris impacting the Earth?

On May 5, 2020, China launched LM5B for the testing capability of sending humans in space. On May 12, nearly 18 tonnes of a mass of the empty core came uncontrolled towards Earth making it a probable threat for some parts of the world. Fortunately, the debris fell in the Atlantic Ocean.

This is not the first time for such an impact on Earth by space shuttles. In 1979, American space station SkyLab came falling down and was predicted to fall in the Indian Ocean. Eventually, Skylab fell in the sea but some parts did hit Australia, thus clearly underlining the threat from the skies. In 1991, Soviets Salyut also landed in the sea, and recently in 2018 yet another Chinas space station Tiangong 1 came down in somewhat uncontrolled fashion to eventually make a splash in the South Pacific Ocean.

We see that the potential threat exists and is a reason of concern for us. The more launches we do, the more we have a threat of things coming back to fall on Earth.

How astronomers detect and track debris in space?

Shuttle dragging the dead satellite in the atmosphere to burn.

The space debris is classified based on the size of the particles. There are over 100 million particles of size less than 1 cm. They can cause holes in the solar panels or other instruments and are responsible for minor damages. Particles with a size of more than 1 cm but less than 10 cm are around 1 million in number. They can cause partial to complete damage to the satellite or spacecraft nearby. Particle oversize of 10 cm is around 34,000 in number and are the most dangerous objects. They can cause complete destruction.

The size of the particle also matters depending on which orbit it is seen. If it is close to Earth orbit called Lower Earth Orbit (150 km to 2000 km), then the large particles of 10 cm or more are very dangerous. Space stations are in these orbits only. In contrast, if a particle of 50 cm or more size is in Geo-stationary orbit (far up to 36,000 km) then it will still be considered as a safe object.

We use ground-based telescopes and radio telescopes to track these particles. They are well cataloged and continuously monitored. A large European telescope with a 1-meter diameter mirror is used for observation of debris in Low Earth Orbits. Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) and Very High Frequency (VHF) radars are used as well.

Are there any methods or technologies developed which can efficiently remove the potentially harmful space debris?

Fishing the dead satellites.

There are multiple plans to make sure the space debris issue is mitigated. Let us understand that our atmosphere already is a protection for us. The debris can be carefully pulled into the atmosphere and can be totally burnt off. So, we do have a defence mechanism. One of the options suggested is to send a small spacecraft that can capture the defunct satellites, drag them to the atmosphere in a controlled way and burn them off. Such devices can be Tethers or magnetic locking devices. Other plans are to send similar robotic arm missions but with a fish catching net and capture the debris.

In the near future, are there any missions planned by any space agency to tackle this issue?

Technology demonstration missions are being planned for such experiments. European Space Agency is planning a mission called ClearSpace and it may be launched by 2025 or earlier. Japanese agency JAXA launched an experimental Kounotori Integrated Tither Experiment (KITE) in 2017 but the end part of the mission was not successful. The next mission is being planned.

As satellites continue to be launched at an unprecedented rate, what are the long-term solutions for solving the issue of space debris?

Small space shuttle Tethering the satellite.

One of the most crucial ways to reduce the debris is that when we send a mission, we have to ensure that the spacecraft has an end of life protocol included in it. When the satellite reaches the end of life, it should take up a spiral orbit and enter gradually in the atmosphere and burn off. This will ensure that the debris is not accumulated. But this needs extra fuel and hence the cost will go up.

Another option is to use the fuel and drive off the satellite to further orbit near 3,6000 km and dump it there. Such a dead zone of satellites or so-called parking orbits is the location where they may accumulate. All the devices that can explode should be avoided. Unwanted fuel can be burnt off so that there are no further explosions and the defunct object stays in-tact till long term.

The third and most important aspect is to ensure satellites have multiple technologies integrated and pooled amongst nations. So we can decrease the load in space, to reduce the cost of launch and maintenance.

If we are able to mitigate successfully, we can have a healthy clean space where we can launch vehicles when we want. Else, we will have so much debris by 2050, that each time there is a launch, you will have to wait for hours to get a clear patch.

**

This article was produced in collaboration with Khagol Mandal.

This article is a part of an expert interview series. The opinions of the experts does not necessarily represent the official views of The Weather Channel.

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Ask An Astronomer: Space Debris and Threat They Pose to Satellites, Space Missions - The Weather Channel

Tuesday, May 26Comet SWAN (C/2020 F8) reaches perihelion today, rounding the Sun at a distance of 37 million miles (59.5 million kilometers) from our star. Glowing around magnitude 6, the comet is an excellent binocular or small scope target in Perseus. But Northern Hemisphere observers beware: Its already low on the northwestern horizon an hour after sunset, roughly 10 high and sinking. The comet is less than 5 above the horizon two hours after sunset, but with good seeing and a clear view all the way to the horizon, youre likely to spot it a little over 8 due west of Capella.

Even as Comet SWAN sets, a different swan is rising: M17 (NGC 6618), also known as the Swan Nebula or the Omega Nebula in Sagittarius. Rising around 10 P.M. local time and gaining altitude with each passing hour, the Swan Nebula can be seen with binoculars or even a small scope. The star-forming regions name comes from its resemblance to a swan gliding across a lake; can you spot the birds arching neck and long, feathery body?

Wednesday, May 27Asteroid 3 Juno is stationary at 10 A.M. EDT. After today, Juno will halt its northwestern motion and make a tight turn, heading back to the southeast relative to the background stars.

Currently in the constellation Virgo, you can find Juno about 6 northwest of Auva (Delta [] Virginis). Juno is currently magnitude 10.7, so youll need large binoculars or a small scope to seek it out. Tonight, its just 1 northwest of the galaxy NGC 4580, a dim spiral youll likely need a 10-inch scope (or larger) to glimpse.

Juno is about 145 miles (234 km) in diameter. It contains roughly 1 percent of the total mass in the asteroid belt but is only about 3 percent the total mass of Ceres, the largest body in the main belt.

Thursday, May 28A nearly 40-percent-lit Moon sits just in front of Leo the Lion tonight. Nearby is Leos bright heart, Regulus, a magnitude 1.4 star whose name means little king in Latin. One of the brightest stars in the sky, Regulus is located almost exactly on the ecliptic, the plane of our solar system on which all the major planets orbit.

If you draw a line between the Moon and Regulus, then follow it 24.5 to the east, youll reach magnitude 2.1 Denebola, often drawn as the tip of the lions tail. Located a mere 36 light-years away, this blue-white star is more than 1.5 times as wide as the Sun and emits nearly 14 times as much light. It is also surrounded by a complex disk of cool dust, which emits light at longer, infrared wavelengths; this is the same dust from which planets are born, although there are no planets yet confirmed around this star.

Friday, May 29Saturns largest moon, Titan, sits roughly 1' due north of the ringed planet this morning. At magnitude 8.6, the moon should be the second-brightest object in your field of view (after the planet itself).

Saturns more distant, two-faced moon, Iapetus, is on its way toward its greatest western elongation on the 31st. Along the way, its growing steadily brighter, and should now be shining at nearly magnitude 10.5 almost 9' directly west of the planet. Hyperion sits roughly one-third of the way between Saturn and Iapetus, but may be invisible at magnitude 14.

First Quarter Moon occurs tonight at 11:30 P.M. EDT.

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The Sky This Week from May 22 to 29 - Astronomy Magazine

New HorizonsAstronomers think they know why, thanks to the images sent back by the New Horizons spacecraft that flew past Pluto in 2015. These images revealed an unexpectedly complex surface with widely varying colors. A mysterious reddish cap at the north pole turned out to be colored by organic molecules. And a large, white, ice-covered basin called Sputnik Planitia stretched across a large part of one hemisphere.

Planetary geologists think Sputnik Planitia plays an important role in regulating Plutos atmosphere. Thats because, when it faces the sun, it releases gas into the atmosphere. Simulations suggest that this is why Plutos atmosphere has continued to grow, even as it has begun to move away from the sun.

The simulations are complicated by Sputnik Planitias color, which determines the amount of light it absorbs, and this in turn is influenced by ice formation in ways that are hard to predict.

Nevertheless, these same simulations suggest that, since 2015, Sputnik Planitia should have begun to cool, causing the atmosphere to condense into ice. Arimatsu and colleagues say thats probably whats behind their new observation.

There is a problem, however. The models suggest that Plutos atmosphere ought to have shrunk by less than 1 percent since 2016, not the 20 percent observed by the Japanese team. So there may be some other factor at work that is accelerating Plutos atmospheric collapse.

The result must also be treated with caution. The effect of Plutos atmosphere on distant starlight is small and hard to observe with the 60-centimeter reflecting telescope that the team used. They say the various sources of error in their measurement make it only marginally significant.

That means the chances to make better observations in the future will be few and far between. The team concludes with a plea for astronomers to observe Pluto with bigger, more sensitive telescopes, preferably those with diameters measured in meters.

Until then, Plutos vanishing atmosphere will remain something of a mystery.

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What's happening to Pluto's atmosphere - Astronomy Magazine

This is an artist's impression of the Wolfe Disk, a massive rotating disk galaxy in the early universe.

A bright yellow "twist" near the center of this image shows where a planet may be forming around the AB Aurigae star. The image was captured by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

This artist's illustration shows the orbits of two stars and an invisible black hole 1,000 light-years from Earth. This system includes one star (small orbit seen in blue) orbiting a newly discovered black hole (orbit in red), as well as a third star in a wider orbit (also in blue).

This illustration shows a star's core, known as a white dwarf, pulled into orbit around a black hole. During each orbit, the black hole rips off more material from the star and pulls it into a glowing disk of material around the black hole. Before its encounter with the black hole, the star was a red giant in the last stages of stellar evolution.

This artist's illustration shows the collision of two 125-mile-wide icy, dusty bodies orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut, located 25 light-years away. The observation of the aftermath of this collision was once thought to be an exoplanet.

This is an artist's impression of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov as it travels through our solar system. New observations detected carbon monixide in the cometary tail as the sun heated the comet.

This rosette pattern is the orbit of a star, called S2, around the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.

This is an artist's illustration of SN2016aps, which astronomers believe is the brightest supernova ever observed.

This is an artist's illustration of a brown dwarf, or a "failed star" object, and its magnetic field. The brown dwarf's atmosphere and magnetic field rotate at different speeds, which allowed astronomers to determine wind speed on the object.

This artist's illustration shows an intermediate-mass black hole tearing into a star.

This is an artist's impression of a large star known as HD74423 and its much smaller red dwarf companion in a binary star system. The large star appears to pulsate on one side only, and it's being distorted by the gravitational pull of its companion star into a teardrop shape.

This is an artist's impression of two white dwarfs in the process of merging. While astronomers expected that this might cause a supernova, they have found an instance of two white dwarf stars that survived merging.

A combination of space and ground-based telescopes have found evidence for the biggest explosion seen in the universe. The explosion was created by a black hole located in the Ophiuchus cluster's central galaxy, which has blasted out jets and carved a large cavity in the surrounding hot gas.

The red supergiant star Betelgeuse, in the constellation of Orion, has been undergoing unprecedented dimming. This image was taken in January using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

This new ALMA image shows the outcome of a stellar fight: a complex and stunning gas environment surrounding the binary star system HD101584.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured the Tarantula Nebula in two wavelengths of infrared light. The red represents hot gas, while the blue regions are interstellar dust.

A white dwarf, left, is pulling material off of a brown dwarf, right, about 3,000 light-years from Earth.

This image shows the orbits of the six G objects at the center of our galaxy, with the supermassive black hole indicated with a white cross. Stars, gas and dust are in the background.

After stars die, they expel their particles out into space, which form new stars in turn. In one case, stardust became embedded in a meteorite that fell to Earth. This illustration shows that stardust could flow from sources like the Egg Nebula to create the grains recovered from the meteorite, which landed in Australia.

The former North Star, Alpha Draconis or Thuban, is circled here in an image of the northern sky.

Galaxy UGC 2885, nicknamed the "Godzilla galaxy," may be the largest one in the local universe.

The host galaxy of a newly traced repeating fast radio burst acquired with the 8-meter Gemini-North telescope.

The Milky Way's central region was imaged using the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope.

This is an artist's illustration of what MAMBO-9 would look like in visible light. The galaxy is very dusty and it has yet to build most of its stars. The two components show that the galaxy is in the process of merging.

Astronomers have found a white dwarf star surrounded by a gas disk created from an ice giant planet being torn apart by its gravity.

New measurements of the black hole at the center of the Holm 15A galaxy reveal it's 40 billion times more massive than our sun, making it the heaviest known black hole to be directly measured.

A close-up view of an interstellar comet passing through our solar system can be seen on the left. On the right, astronomers used an image of Earth for comparison.

The galaxy NGC 6240 hosts three supermassive black holes at its core.

Gamma-ray bursts are shown in this artist's illustration. They can be triggered by the collision or neutron stars or the explosion of a super massive star, collapsing into a black hole.

Two gaseous clouds resembling peacocks have been found in neighboring dwarf galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. In these images by the ALMA telescopes, red and green highlight molecular gas while blue shows ionized hydrogen gas.

An artist's impression of the Milky Way's big black hole flinging a star from the galaxy's center.

The Jack-o'-lantern Nebula is on the edge of the Milky Way. Radiation from the massive star at its center created spooky-looking gaps in the nebula that make it look like a carved pumpkin.

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures two galaxies of equal size in a collision that appears to resemble a ghostly face. This observation was made on 19 June 2019 in visible light by the telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.

A new SPHERE/VLT image of Hygiea, which could be the Solar System's smallest dwarf planet yet. As an object in the main asteroid belt, Hygiea satisfies right away three of the four requirements to be classified as a dwarf planet: it orbits around the Sun, it is not a moon and, unlike a planet, it has not cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit. The final requirement is that it have enough mass that its own gravity pulls it into a roughly spherical shape. This is what VLT observations have now revealed about Hygiea.

This is an artist's rendering of what a massive galaxy from the early universe might look like. The rendering shows that star formation in the galaxy is lighting up the surrounding gas. Image by James Josephides/Swinburne Astronomy Productions, Christina Williams/University of Arizona and Ivo Labbe/Swinburne.

This is an artist's illustration of gas and dust disk around the star HD 163296. Gaps in the disk are likely the location of baby planets that are forming.

This is a two-color composite image of comet 2I/Borisov captured by the Gemini North telescope on September 10.

This illustration shows a young, forming planet in a "baby-proof" star system.

Using a simulation, astronomers shed light on the faint gaseous filaments that comprise the cosmic web in a massive galaxy cluster.

The Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera observed Saturn in June as the planet made its closest approach to Earth this year, at approximately 1.36 billion kilometers away.

An artist's impression of the massive bursts of ionizing radiation exploding from the center of the Milky Way and impacting the Magellanic Stream.

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array captured this unprecedented image of two circumstellar disks, in which baby stars are growing, feeding off material from their surrounding birth disk.

This is an artist's illustration of what a Neptune-size moon would look like orbiting the gas giant exoplanet Kepler-1625b in a star system 8,000 light-years from Earth. It could be the first exomoon ever discovered.

This infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows a cloud of gas and dust full of bubbles, which are inflated by wind and radiation from massive young stars. Each bubble is filled with hundreds to thousands of stars, which form from dense clouds of gas and dust.

This is an artist's impression of the path of the fast radio burst FRB 181112 traveling from a distant host galaxy to reach the Earth. It passed through the halo of a galaxy on the way.

After passing too close to a supermassive black hole, the star in this artist's conception is torn into a thin stream of gas, which is then pulled back around the black hole and slams into itself, creating a bright shock and ejecting more hot material.

Comparison of GJ 3512 to the Solar System and other nearby red-dwarf planetary systems. Planets around a solar-mass stars can grow until they start accreting gas and become giant planets such as Jupiter, in a few millions of years. But we thought that small stars such asProxima, TRAPPIST-1, Teegarderns star and GJ 3512, could not form Jupiter mass planets.

A collision of three galaxies has set three supermassive black holes on a crash course with each other in a system one billion light-years from Earth.

2I/Borisov is the first interstellar comet observed in our solar system and only the second observed interstellar visitor to our solar system.

KIC 8462852, also known as Boyajian's Star or Tabby's Star, is 1,000 light-years from us. It's 50% bigger than our sun and 1,000 degrees hotter. And it doesn't behave like any other star, dimming and brightening sporadically. Dust around the star, depicted here in an artist's illustration, may be the most likely cause of its strange behavior.

This is an artist's impression of a massive neutron star's pulse being delayed by the passage of a white dwarf star between the neutron star and Earth. Astronomers have detected the most massive neutron star to date due to this delay.

The European Southern Observatory's VISTA telescope captured a stunning image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of our nearest galactic neighbors. The near-infrared capability of the telescope showcases millions of individual stars.

Astronomers believe Comet C/2019 Q4 could be the second known interstellar visitor to our solar system. It was first spotted on August 30 and imaged by the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii's Big Island on September 10, 2019.

A star known as S0-2, represented as the blue and green object in this artist's illustration, made its closest approach to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way in 2018. This provided a test for Einstein's theory of general relativity.

This is a radio image of the Milky Way's galactic center. The radio bubbles discovered by MeerKAT extend vertically above and below the plane of the galaxy.

A kilanova was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2016, seen here next to the red arrow. Kilanovae are massive explosions that create heavy elements like gold and platinum.

This is an artist's depiction of a black hole about to swallow a neutron star. Detectors signaled this possible event on August 14.

This artist's illustration shows LHS 3844b, a rocky nearby exoplanet. It's 1.3 times the mass of Earth and orbits a cool M-dwarf star. The planet's surface is probably dark and covered in cooled volcanic material, and there is no detectable atmosphere.

An artist's concept of the explosion of a massive star within a dense stellar environment.

Galaxy NGC 5866 is 44 million light-years from Earth. It appears flat because we can only see its edge in this image captured by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The Hubble Space Telescope took a dazzling new portrait of Jupiter, showcasing its vivid colors and swirling cloud features in the atmosphere.

This is an artist's impression of the ancient massive and distant galaxies observed with ALMA.

Glowing gas clouds and newborn stars make up the Seagull Nebula in one of the Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms.

An artist's concept of what the first stars looked like soon after the Big Bang.

Spiral galaxy NGC 2985 lies roughly over 70 million light years from our solar system in the constellation of Ursa Major.

Early in the history of the universe, the Milky Way galaxy collided with a dwarf galaxy, left, which helped form our galaxy's ring and structure as it's known today.

An artist's illustration of a thin disc embedded in a supermassive black hole at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 3147, 130 million light-years away.

Hubble captured this view of a spiral galaxy named NGC 972 that appears to be blooming with new star formation. The orange glow is created as hydrogen gas reacts to the intense light streaming outwards from nearby newborn stars.

This is jellyfish galaxy JO201.

The Eta Carinae star system, located 7,500 light-years from Earth, experienced a great explosion in 1838 and the Hubble Space Telescope is still capturing the aftermath. This new ultraviolet image reveals the warm glowing gas clouds that resemble fireworks.

'Oumuamua, the first observed interstellar visitor to our solar system, is shown in an artist's illustration.

This is an artist's rendering of ancient supernovae that bombarded Earth with cosmic energy millions of years ago.

An artist's impression of CSIRO's Australian SKA Pathfinder radio telescope finding a fast radio burst and determining its precise location.

The Whirlpool galaxy has been captured in different light wavelengths. On the left is a visible light image. The next image combines visible and infrared light, while the two on the right show different wavelengths of infrared light.

Electrically charged C60 molecules, in which 60 carbon atoms are arranged in a hollow sphere that resembles a soccer ball, was found by the Hubble Space Telescope in the interstellar medium between star systems.

These are magnified galaxies behind large galaxy clusters. The pink halos reveal the gas surrounding the distant galaxies and its structure. The gravitational lensing effect of the clusters multiplies the images of the galaxies.

This artist's illustration shows a blue quasar at the center of a galaxy.

The NICER detector on the International Space Station recorded 22 months of nighttime X-ray data to create this map of the entire sky.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured this mosaic of the star-forming Cepheus C and Cepheus B regions.

Galaxy NGC 4485 collided with its larger galactic neighbor NGC 4490 millions of years ago, leading to the creation of new stars seen in the right side of the image.

Astronomers developed a mosaic of the distant universe, called the Hubble Legacy Field, that documents 16 years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope. The image contains 200,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time to just 500 million years after the Big Bang.

A ground-based telescope's view of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy of our Milky Way. The inset was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and shows one of the star clusters in the galaxy.

One of the brightest planetary nebulae on the sky and first discovered in 1878, nebula NGC 7027 can be seen toward the constellation of the Swan.

The asteroid 6478 Gault is seen with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of debris that tell us that the asteroid is slowly undergoing self-destruction. The bright streaks surrounding the asteroid are background stars. The Gault asteroid is located 214 million miles from the Sun, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

The ghostly shell in this image is a supernova, and the glowing trail leading away from it is a pulsar.

Hidden in one of the darkest corners of the Orion constellation, this Cosmic Bat is spreading its hazy wings through interstellar space two thousand light-years away. It is illuminated by the young stars nestled in its coredespite being shrouded by opaque clouds of dust, their bright rays still illuminate the nebula.

In this illustration, several dust rings circle the sun. These rings form when planets' gravities tug dust grains into orbit around the sun. Recently, scientists have detected a dust ring at Mercury's orbit. Others hypothesize the source of Venus' dust ring is a group of never-before-detected co-orbital asteroids.

This is an artist's impression of globular star clusters surrounding the Milky Way.

An artist's impression of life on a planet in orbit around a binary star system, visible as two suns in the sky.

An artist's illustration of one of the most distant solar system objects yet observed, 2018 VG18 -- also known as "Farout." The pink hue suggests the presence of ice. We don't yet have an idea of what "FarFarOut" looks like.

This is an artist's concept of the tiny moon Hippocamp that was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope. Only 20 miles across, it may actually be a broken-off fragment from a much larger neighboring moon, Proteus, seen as a crescent in the background.

In this illustration, an asteroid (bottom left) breaks apart under the powerful gravity of LSPM J0207+3331, the oldest, coldest white dwarf known to be surrounded by a ring of dusty debris. Scientists think the system's infrared signal is best explained by two distinct rings composed of dust supplied by crumbling asteroids.

An artist's impression of the warped and twisted Milky Way disk. This happens when the rotational forces of the massive center of the galaxy tug on the outer disk.

This 1.3-kilometer (0.8-mile)-radius Kuiper Belt Object discovered by researchers on the edge of the solar system is believed to be the step between balls of dust and ice and fully formed planets.

A selfie taken by NASA's Curiosity Mars rover on Vera Rubin Ridge before it moves to a new location.

The Hubble Space Telescope found a dwarf galaxy hiding behind a big star cluster that's in our cosmic neighborhood. It's so old and pristine that researchers have dubbed it a "living fossil" from the early universe.

How did massive black holes form in the early universe? The rotating gaseous disk of this dark matter halo breaks apart into three clumps that collapse under their own gravity to form supermassive stars. Those stars will quickly collapse and form massive black holes.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope captured this image of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to our own Milky Way galaxy. Astrophysicists now believe it could collide with our galaxy in two billion years.

A mysterious bright object in the sky, dubbed "The Cow," was captured in real time by telescopes around the world. Astronomers believe that it could be the birth of a black hole or neutron star, or a new class of object.

An illustration depicts the detection of a repeating fast radio burst from a mysterious source 3 billion light-years from Earth.

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Astronomers find the Wolfe Disk, an unlikely galaxy, in the distant universe - CNN

An image of a mesmerizing cosmic spiral, twisting and swirling around a galactic maw, may be the first direct evidence of the birth of a planet ever captured by humanity.

The European Southern Observatory released a picture Wednesday of what astronomers believe shows the process of cosmic matter at a gravitational tipping point, collapsing into a new world around a nearby star.

Astronomers said the dramatic scene offers a rare glimpse into the formation of a baby planet, which could help scientists better understand how planets come to exist around stars.

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"Thousands of exoplanets have been identified so far, but little is known about how they form," the lead author of a study detailing the discovery, Anthony Boccaletti, an astronomer at the Observatoire de Paris in France, said in a statement.

Planets are thought to form out of the massive discs of gas and dust that surround young stars. As tiny specks of dust circle a star and collide with one another, some material starts to fuse, much like how rolling a snowball through more snow will eventually yield a bigger snowball. After billions of years, the clumps of material become large enough that the force of gravity shapes them into planets.

The new image peers into the disc of material around a young star known as AB Aurigae, which is 520 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Auriga. Amid the hypnotic spiral arms is a "twist," visible in the photo as a bright yellow region in the center, that is thought to be a sign of a planet being born, said Emmanuel Di Folco, a researcher at the Astrophysics Laboratory of Bordeaux in France, who participated in the study.

When a planet forms, the clumps of material create wavelike perturbations in the gas- and dust-filled disc around a star, "somewhat like the wake of a boat on a lake," Di Folco said.

The bright region at the center of the new image is thought to be evidence of such a disturbance, which had been predicted in models of planetary birth.

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"The twist is expected from some theoretical models of planet formation," said Anne Dutrey, an astronomer at the Astrophysics Laboratory of Bordeaux and co-author of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. "It corresponds to the connection of two spirals one winding inwards of the planet's orbit, the other expanding outwards which join at the planet location."

The new observations of the baby planet were made in 2019 and early 2020 by the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The research team, made up of astronomers from France, Taiwan, the U.S. and Belgium, said the images are the deepest observations of the AB Aurigae system made to date.

Denise Chow is a reporter for NBC News Science focused on the environment and space.

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In an orange swirl, astronomers say humanity has its first look at the birth of a planet - NBCNews.com

In the far reaches of the Solar System, past the orbit of Neptune, things start getting trickier and trickier to see. Directly imaging small objects out in the darkness of the Kuiper Belt - where Pluto resides - is really difficult, which makes a recent discovery all the more exciting.

If you know where something is, you can observe it by waiting for it to pass in front of distant stars. This is called occultation, and astronomers use it to study all sorts of trans-Neptunian objects.

But when astronomers used occultation in 2018 to study one such object they've been watching for nearly two decades, they found something really unexpected - a chonk of a moon, relative to the body it is orbiting. A study describing their findings has now been accepted into Astronomy & Astrophysics,and was first covered by Jonathan O'Callaghan over atNew Scientist.

The object caught sporting this moon is probable dwarf planet (84522) 2002 TC302.It was first discovered in 2002, after which it was also identified in earlier observations.

Between 2000 and 2018, astronomers collected at least 126 observations of the object across a variety of wavelengths (including the Hubble Space Telescope); using this information, they calculated the potential dwarf planet's orbit, size, and colour.

They found that it's around 584 kilometres (363 miles) in diameter,and with an orbital period of 417 years - in a 2:5 orbital resonance with Neptune.

That's pretty awesome. It means 2002 TC302 almost meets the requirements for a dwarf planet - it's in orbit around the Sun (but not another planet); it hasn't cleared its orbital neighbourhood; and it must have enough mass to achieve hydrostatic equilibrium, or a round shape.

But we're not quite sure. When predictions of its orbit pointed to an occultation event on 28 January 2018, observatories around Europe pointed their eyes at 2002 TC302's neighbourhood to try and figure out its physical properties, such as size and shape.

Telescopes in Italy, France, Slovenia and Switzerland made 12 positive detections of the occultation event, as well as four negative detections. This produced the best observation of a trans-Neptunian object we've obtained to date, the researchers said.

Adding these together allowed the researchers to obtain a new, more accurate measurement of the object's diameter: 500 kilometres (311 miles).

So, how to account for the missing 84 kilometres calculated from the other observations? Well, there's a really interesting answer to that. If 2002 TC302 had a moon around 200 kilometres (124 miles) in diameter, and just 2,000 kilometres (1,243 miles) from the probable dwarf planet, it could produce the signal that other astronomers interpreted as a slightly larger 2002 TC302.

This is crazy close. The Moon, for context, is 384,400 kilometres (238,900 miles) from Earth (on average). At such a close proximity, 2002 TC302's satellite would be extremely hard to image - not even the Hubble Space Telescope images taken in 2005 would be able to resolve it individually.

If the potential dwarf planet really has a satellite, that can help us learn things about the early Solar System. Stuff in the Kuiper Belt has changed very little since the Solar System formed, and as such, these objects are considered time capsules.

Two objects extremely close together could help us to better understand close interactions when the Solar System was forming. Since the planets are thought to have formed via accretion - more and more stuff sticking together - this could be an important clue as to how smaller bodies grow.

An object of similar interest is Arrokoth, the weird snowman-shaped rock visited by the New Horizons probe in 2015. The data provided by that flyby showed us that planetary accretion may be a more gentle process than we thought.

2002 TC302 is a lot bigger than Arrokoth, but it could be at a later stage of the process - which would be really useful in piecing together the stages in which it happens. At any rate, it's clear that we should probably look at it a bit more and try to figure out what its deal is. Exciting!

The research has been accepted into Astronomy & Astrophysics, and is available on arXiv.

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Astronomers May Have Spotted a Tiny Moon in The Outer Solar System - ScienceAlert

Look to the north-west on the evening of Friday 22 May, soon after sunset, to enjoy a spectacular coming together of brilliant Venus and shy and elusive Mercury. The planetary pair are separated in the sky by just 1.3 degrees (77 arcminutes), which is just over two full-Moon diameters. (Another easy-to-demonstrate method of gauging how far this is, is that a finger held out at arms length covers approximately one degree.) Given clear skies, with a few caveats, this exciting event can be enjoyed even from light-polluted towns and cities.

The one fly in the ointment is that the conjunction occurs at an altitude of less than 10 degrees, so youll need to have a horizon from the west-north-west around to the north-west (azimuth 290 to 315 degrees; check your smartphones compass) thats free from obscuring buildings and trees. If you can secure a good view, then this event should be readily visible with the naked eye, but have a pair of binoculars or a small telescope, operating at a low magnification, to hand in case the early evening is hazy. Sunset in London occurs shortly before 9pm BST (20:00 UT), at 9.14pm in Manchester and just after 9.30pm in Edinburgh.Your smartphones weather app can give your local sunset time.

If you have to use binoculars to view the conjunction, then make absolutely sure that the Sun has set below the horizon at your location before sweeping across the sky. If the Sun enters the field of view of any optical aid that you are using, its heat and light can cause catastrophic damage to your eyesight.

Venus will be the first astronomical object to appear in the deepening twilight. Even casual stargazers cant have failed to notice the blazing evening star that has recently seemed an almost permanent fixture in the post-sunset western sky, especially given the fine weather and clear skies most of the UK has been enjoying. The more committed observers will have noticed that the gloss has been coming off Venus brilliance as May has progressed, with the planet sinking lower in the sky and its brightness dimming somewhat. Having said this, Venus is still a blazing beacon, shining at magnitude 4.2.

It shouldnt be too long into the evening before Mercury appears alongside Venus, placed to Venus left at roughly the same altitude. Mercury has been on the scene for about a week now, itself shining significantly brighter than any star visible from UK shores at this time of year, as it has been climbing steadily away from the north-western horizon. This evening it shines at magnitude 0.5.

The end of civil twilight (when the Sun lies six degrees below the horizon) usually signals the appearance of the brighter stars. In London, this occurs at about 9.40pm BST (20.40 UT) and at 10pm and 10.25pm, from Manchester and Edinburgh, respectively. The planetary pair lie at an altitude just short of eight degrees as seen from London, and just over six and seven degrees as seen from Edinburgh and Manchester, respectively.

During any moments of steady seeing (often fleeting at such a low elevation), it might be possible to glean Venus extremely thin crescent disc through a pair of binoculars. Its elongation from the Sun is only 20 degrees and so it exhibits just a 5.3 per cent-illuminated phase some 53 arcminutes in size. A small telescope would be a better bet to see this, as well as resolving Mercurys 67 per cent-illuminated gibbous phase.

Experienced observers can observe this conjunction in broad daylight, as Venus and Mercury are actually at their closest of 0.9 degree (53 arcminutes) at around 9am BST (08:00 UT). At this time, the pair lie about 27 degrees above the eastern horizon from London, and culminate due south at an advantageous 65-degree altitude at around 2.15pm BST, when their separation has widened to nearly 56 arcminutes. Viewing astronomical objects that are close to the Sun in broad daylight is fraught with danger, given the risk of damaging your eyes by looking at the Sun, so this is not recommended for casual or inexperienced observers.

If you are clouded out or cant be free to observe this conjunction, then two evenings later, on Sunday 24 May, look out for when the young crescent Moon muscles in on the scene. It appears above five degrees to the left of Mercury, which is now separated from Venus by just over five degrees.

Venus now rapidly departs the evening sky on its way to inferior conjunction (between us and the Sun) on 3 June. Its been a memorable evening apparition and, in whats a great year for Venus fanciers, the planet returns as a blazing morning star in July, for what promises to be a splendid morning apparition that lasts almost until the end of 2020.

Mercury makes further strides in evening visibility to put on a fine evening apparition, centred on a greatest eastern elongation from the Sun on 4 June.

Its not all that common to see the two innermost, or so-called inferior planets, come this close together, so make the most of it should the sky be clear for you.

Read more here:

Here's your chance to spot Mercury, as it cosies up to Venus this weekend - Astronomy Now Online

In the mid-2020s, NASAs next-generation Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will take to space. With unprecedented resolution and advanced instruments, it will build on the foundation established by the venerable Hubble Space Telescope which celebrated its 30th anniversary this year! In anticipation of all it will accomplish, NASA decided that the WFIRST needs a proper name, one that honors its connection to Hubble.

This week, NASA announced that henceforth, the WFIRST mission will be known as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (or Roman Space Telescope for short) in honor of Dr. Nancy Grace Roman (who passed away in 2018). In addition to being NASAs first Chief Astronomer, she was also a tireless educator and advocate for women in STEMs whose work paved the way for space telescopes leading to her nickname the mother of Hubble.

Its therefore only fitting that we take a look at the inspiring life of this pioneer and the work that earned her a place among the stars!

Born in Nashville, Tennessee in 1925, Roman demonstrated a fascination with astronomy early in life. After forming an astronomy club with classmates in middle-school, Roman decided by the time she reached high school that she wanted to pursue astronomy as a career (though she was discouraged by those around her).

After graduating, she attended Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and worked at the Sproul Observatory. She then pursued her graduate studies at the University of Chicago while conducting research at the Yerkes Observatory in Wisconsin and the McDonald Observatory in Texas, eventually becoming an assistant professor.

However, due to the dearth of tenured positions available to women at the time, she eventually took a position at the Naval Research Laboratory (ARL) in 1954 on the recommendation of fellow astronomer Gerard Kuiper. Over the next three years, she contributed to the emerging field of radio astronomy and become head of the ARLs microwave spectroscopy section.

During her time with the ARL, Roman came to the attention of the international astronomical community and traveled overseas to lecture on her research. Her work was also noticed by the newly-formed National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) and in 1959, she joined NASA to spearhead its program for observational astronomy.

Her acceptance into NASA as their Head of Observational Astronomy effectively meant that she would be giving up her research, but she felt that the sacrifice was worth it. As she was quoted as saying in a memoir published in 2018, the chance to start with a clean slate to map out a program that I thought would influence astronomy for fifty years was more than I could resist.

By the early 1960s, she became the first Chief of Astronomy in NASAs Office of Space Science and traveled extensively across the US to deliver lectures to astronomy departments and promote NASA programs. In her own words, the visits were intended to tell them what we were planning at NASA and what the NASA opportunities were, but it was equally to try to get from them a feeling of what they thought NASA ought to be doing.

By the mid-1960s, she established a committee of astronomers and engineers to envision a telescope that could conduct observations from space and accomplish important scientific goals. In time, her advocacy convinced NASA and Congress to make the creation of a space telescope a priority. Her efforts were realized in 1990 with the launch of Hubble, which was to be the most scientifically revolutionary space telescope of all time.

Since Hubble took to space, its science operations have been coordinated and overseen by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland. This consisted of scheduling and carrying out observations, processing and archiving mission datasets, and performing outreach programs with the astronomical community and general public.

Next year, when the James Webb Space Telescope is launched into orbit, its science and mission operations centers will also be housed in the STScI. In 2019, NASA announced that STScI would also serve as the science operations center for the Roman Space Telescope. AS STScI Director Kenneth Sembach said:

Dr. Nancy Grace Roman was an accomplished scientist and leader, as well as a staunch advocate of Hubble and NASAs other Great Observatories. She also strongly backed the creation of STScI. We thought of her as a colleague and friend, and were delighted to welcome her to the Institute for our annual spring science symposium in 2017...

We are honored to be part of her continuing legacy. Our entire team stands ready to support the astronomical community and ensure that the Roman Space Telescope will achieve its full scientific potential.

Like its predecessors, all the data collected by the Roman Space Telescope will be kept in the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes (MAST) at the STScI, where it will readily available for investigators, researchers, and astronomers around the world. It is estimated that over its planned 5-year mission, the observatory will collect an estimated 20 petabytes (PB) of data.

In comparison, The British Library, the largest national library in the world and one of the largest databases in existence, contains roughly 500 terabytes of preserved data. Doing the math, we can safely say that the RST will gather the equivalent of 40 British Libraries. The availability of all this data is sure to keep scientists engaged and fuel discoveries long after the mission is over.

The Roman Space Telescope will bring big data to space astrophysics, said STScI Deputy Director Nancy Levenson. The large and freely accessible data sets will inspire new ways of exploring the cosmos, advancing our understanding and presenting new mysteries.

As noted in previous articles, the RST will have the power of 100 Hubbles. What this means is that while the RST will have the same sensitivity and resolution as Hubble, it will be able to cover a viewing area 100 times larger. This is made possible by the telescopes 18 detectors (4096 x 4096 pixels each), which allow the RST to cover an area roughly 1.33 times that of a Full Moon Hubble images cover an area less than 1% that of a Full Moon.

Its advanced suite of scientific instruments will also allow it to conduct a wide array of astronomical observations. This includes the Wide-Field Instrument (WFI), a 288-megapixel camera that is capable of multi-band near-infrared imaging. This will allow the RST to observe diverse populations of astronomical objects that are otherwise unobservable in visible light.

The RST will also work in concert with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) for the sake of conducting in-depth radio observations. This will consist of the RST taking advantage of its wide field of view to reveal diverse populations of astronomical objects in infrared wavelengths while the JWST conducts follow-up observations using its superior infrared imaging capabilities.

Then theres the high contrast coronagraph the telescope will use to suppress light coming from distant stars, which will allow astronomers to conduct direct imaging studies of smaller, rocky exoplanets that orbit closer to their stars. This will enable more detailed studies of potentially habitable planets, better characterizations of their atmospheres, and the identification of potential biosignatures.

Another thing that the RST will have going for it is its proposed orbit, which will give it a view of space largely unobstructed by Earth. Whereas Hubbles Low Earth Orbit (LEO) of about 560 km (350 mi) often means that it is obnly able to collect data for half of its orbital period, the RST will be in a wide orbit of about 1.6 million km (1 million mi) and able to make observations in an almost continuous fashion.

Like the other NASA Great Observatories (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble, and the Spitzer Space Telescope), the RST will help spur advances in many fields of astrophysics. This will include completing the census of exoplanets by discovering thousands of new worlds and characterizing them, as well as the study of comets, asteroids, dwarf planets, and ocean worlds in our Solar System.

The RST will also observe billions of star systems, some of which are still in the process of formation, and millions of galaxies and their surrounding structures. In the process, it will shed light on enduring cosmic mysteries like Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the role they have played in cosmic evolution. Lastly, the RST will use its superior imaging capabilities to study the earliest stars and galaxies in our Universe.

In short, the Roman Space Telescope will allow researchers and astronomers to do precisely what Dr. Roman herself once said: If you enjoy puzzles, science or engineering may be the field for you, because scientific research and engineering is a continuous series of solving puzzles.

It is no exaggeration to say that the Hubble Space Telescope owes its very existence to Dr. Nancy Grace Roman. It is therefore very fitting that the space telescope that will build on the foundation established by Hubble (and also greatly expand upon it) will be named after its mother. She would no doubt be very happy that the WFIRST bears her name in recognition of her accomplishments.

But I think its safe to say that she would be more pleased to know that the tradition of space-based observatories has carried on in her absence and it is becoming even more bold and sophisticated. She would also be very pleased to know that the discoveries these next-generation telescopes promise will be that much more profound.

Be sure to check out this video on the life and contributions of Dr. Roman, courtesy of NASA Goddard:

Further Reading: NASA Hubblesite, Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope

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WFIRST Will be Named After Nancy Grace Roman, NASA's First Chief Astronomer - Universe Today