The distant star AU Microscopii may have mysterious cold spots. It seems to contain pockets of hydrogen that are more than 1500°C cooler than the surrounding areas, and astronomers aren’t sure why.
Built using a 3D-printed framework and an Espressif ESP32, this modular lighting system can double as a display.
Hoag’s Object is a galaxy with an central region and a bright outer ring, but lacks any intervening material.
Hoag’s Object is a galaxy with an central region and a bright outer ring, but lacks any intervening material.
No. 7: With This Ring, I Thee Puzzle.
In 1950, astronomer Arthur Hoag came upon a tiny, faint, 16th-magnitude ring surrounding a ball-like center, and reasonably assumed it was a planetary nebula — a nearby puff of gas expelled from a single old-aged star. He also proposed an alternative and far more exotic explanation that this was an “Einstein Ring” from a faraway quasar. In this scenario, the quasar’s light is distorted into a halo by space-warping caused by a massive foreground spherical galaxy that it seems to surround. But later spectroscopic studies rejected this because the golden central ball and the blue ring have exactly the same redshift, indicating a whopping rush-away speed of 7,916 miles (12,740 kilometers) per second, which proves they’re both located exactly the same distance from us.
The James Webb Space Telescope dima_zel/ iStock
Between May 23 and 25, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was hit by a micrometeoroid that has impacted one of its primary mirror segments, NASA said in a recent update on its website. The telescope continues to function at levels exceeding mission requirements.
A meteoroid is a fragment of an asteroid and can be either large or small. A micrometeoroid, though, is a microscopic fragment of a meteoroid and is smaller than a grain of sand. NASA estimates that millions of meteoroids and micrometeoroids strike the Earth’s atmosphere every day but most burn up due to the friction.
#PlanetExplorers brings you epic stories of exploration and discovery around five bodies in our solar system, told by the scientists who love and study them.
This week, explore a mysterious burst of radio waves from space, meet a miraculous Galapagos tortoise, discover a fearsome dinosaur, learn what it takes to explore Venus, and more.
