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The team took the bold step of pointing ESO’s Very Large Telescope, equipped with the MUSE instrument coupled to the telescope’s adaptive optics system, at a single region of the sky for over 140 hours. Together, the two instruments form one of the most powerful systems in the world.^[3] The region selected forms part of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, which was until now the deepest image of the cosmos ever obtained. However, Hubble has now been surpassed, since 40% of the galaxies discovered by MUSE have no counterpart in the Hubble images.

Universe Today.

Being able to look up at a clear, dark sky is becoming more and more rare in the rich world. Authors, artists, and even scientists have started to express concern about what our lack of daily exposure to a dark night time sky might mean for our psyche and our sense of place in the universe. Now a team has collected photometric data at 44 sites around the world in an attempt to quantify how dark the night sky actually is at different places on the globe. So where was the darkest place surveyed? The Canary Islands.

It just so happens that the lead researcher on the project, Dr. Miguel Alarcón is from that set of islands off the west coast of Africa. The paper he and his colleagues wrote, soon to be published in The Astronomical Journal, used a series of photometers, confusing called TESS (not to be confused with the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) to try to get a baseline of how dark the night sky is throughout the world.

Continue reading “Astronomers Measure the Background Brightness of the Night sky Across the World. Canary Islands are the Darkest in the Survey” »

Something went boom in outer space and sent radioactive stardust our way, and it’s just been found at the bottom of the ocean.

The U.S. and China are locked in a fierce battle in the race for Mars. China’s Zhurong rover is circling Mars as the country attempts to land a spacecraft on the red planet for the first time, just months after NASA landed its Perseverance rover. Photos: NASA; CCTV

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Continue reading “China’s Zhurong vs. NASA’s Perseverance: Rover Tech in Mars Space Race | WSJ” »

China just successfully landed its first rover on Mars, becoming only the second nation to do so.

The Tianwen-1 mission, China’s first interplanetary endeavor, reached the surface of the Red Planet Friday (May 14) at approximately 7:11 p.m. EDT (2311 GMT), though Chinese space officials have not yet confirmed the exact time and location of touchdown. Tianwen-1 (which translates to “Heavenly Questions”) arrived in Mars’ orbit in February after launching to the Red Planet on a Long March 5 rocket in July 2020.

Circa 2020

Photonics could soon allow NASA to swap from radio to lasers.

Launching this summer, NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will showcase the dynamic powers of laser communications technologies. With NASA’s ever-increasing human and robotic presence in space, missions can benefit from a new way of “talking” with Earth.

Since the beginning of spaceflight in the 1950s, NASA missions have leveraged radio frequency communications to send data to and from space. Laser communications, also known as optical communications, will further empower missions with unprecedented data capabilities.

Great new episode with renowned geneticist Christopher Mason who talks about his book on how we will need to bioengineer our own species in order to expand beyond our solar system.

Geneticist Christopher Mason chats about his new book, “The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds” from MIT Press. We discuss both the nuts and bolts and the philosophy driving our expansion offworld. Mason’s goal is to preserve our species by expanding to an Earth 2.0 in order to avoid our star’s own Red Giant endgame.

Continue reading “Episode 50 --- Bioengineering Our Human Species To Reach The Stars” »

China’s plucky Yutu 2 rover is about to wake up and continue to explore the far side of the moon as the nation works to land a rover on Mars this May.

The rover, which launched with the Chang’e 4 mission, landed on the far side of the moon in January 2019 and recently completed its 29th lunar day of activities, the China Lunar Exploration Project (CLEP) said on April 23.