Research on an ancient spiral galaxy reveals crucial insights into early galaxy formation, highlighting rapid star formation and unique structural features compared to contemporary galaxies.
A new snapshot of an ancient, far-off galaxy could help scientists understand how it formed and the origins of our own Milky Way.
At more than 12 billion years old, BRI 1335–0417 is the oldest and furthest known spiral galaxy in the Universe.
Posted in biological, robotics/AI, space
Well, many of those who partied hard on New Year’s may be regretting their decision because of the hangover. But once the clutches of alcoholic after-effects decide to free you, you are ready to party again. But even the most hardcore partygoers would not dare to face this challenge. How about having 16 New Years’ Party in a single day? Tough right? But if partying would be high on the list of astronauts at the International Space Station (ISS), they would really have been able to do it.
The reason?
They witness 16 sunrises and sunsets in a ‘single day’ aboard the ISS.
The molecules found are similar to smoke, soot, or fog on Earth and were observed in light that traveled from the galaxy when the cosmos was less than 1.5 billion years-old.
NASA’s spacecraft Juno just had a super-close encounter with the most volcanic world in the solar system—but its stunning first image could be among its last after 56 orbits of Jupiter.
On December 30, the bus-sized spacecraft—orbiting Jupiter since 2016—got very close to Io, the giant moon of Jupiter. It reached a mere 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) from the moon’s surface. However, the spacecraft’s camera has suffered radiation damage and may not last much longer.
The first image to come back from this, the closest pass since NASA’s Galileo probe imaged the volcanic moon in October 2001, was published on social media by NASA on December 31. “The JunoCam instrument aboard our Juno Mission acquired six images of Jupiter’s moon Io during its close encounter today,” read the tweet. “This black-and-white view was taken at an altitude of about 1,500 miles (2,500 kilometers).”
The fact that the universe is not locally real is one of the more disquieting discoveries of the last half-century.
An international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and involving the University of Bonn has mapped the cold, dense gas of future star nurseries in one of our neighboring galaxies with an unprecedented degree of detail. The data will enable the researchers for the first time to mount an in-depth study of the conditions that exist within the gas during the early stages of star formation outside the Milky Way at the scale of individual star-forming regions.
Their findings have now been published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.
Paradoxically, hot stars begin to form in some of the coldest regions of the universe, specifically in thick clouds of gas and dust that straddle entire galaxies. “To investigate the early phases of star formation, where gas gradually condenses to eventually produce stars, we must first identify these regions,” says Sophia Stuber, a doctoral student at the MPIA in Heidelberg and the first author of the research paper.
Posted in space
Scientists studying the chemical makeup of asteroid Ryugu and the Murchison meteorite find intriguing differences in their organic molecules.
