Telescope

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NASA's newest mission to look for life's ingredients and probe the universe's deep past

Michael Irving February 13, 2019

NASA has selected the newest space mission for its Explorer program: the Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization and Ices Explorer (SPHEREx). The spacecraft will search for the ingredients of life in the Milky Way, and peer as far as 10 billion years back in time.

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Space

Hubble captures "lost light" to reveal deepest look into the universe yet

Michael Irving January 24, 2019

Astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) have re-processed an old Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (HUDF) image to find new details. The end result is the deepest image ever taken of the universe from space.

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Space

Sharper images of a supermassive black hole reveal new secrets

Michael Irving January 23, 2019

A team of astronomers has used a global array of telescopes to peer through the fog and capture some of the clearest radio images yet of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. And it may indicate that the object just happens to be pointing directly at Earth.

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Space

NASA fixes Hubble's faulty camera

Michael Irving January 16, 2019

Hubble appears to be back in working order, with full science operations scheduled to resume by the end of this week. The Wide Field Camera 3 on the aging space telescope was struck by a technical fault on January 8, and NASA engineers now believe they’ve fixed the problem.

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Revolutionary new telescope picks up 13 fast radio burst signals, including one repeater

Michael Irving January 9, 2019

The CHIME telescope has picked up 13 unexplained radio signals coming from beyond the Milky Way. These fast radio bursts are part of one of the strangest mysteries of modern astronomy, but the new detections could help unlock their source, thanks to a rare one that seems to be repeating.

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Space

Technical fault strikes Hubble with government shutdown set to postpone repairs

Michael Irving January 9, 2019

One of Hubble's cameras has automatically suspended operations due to a fault. While Hubble will continue to scan the skies with its three remaining active cameras, NASA can’t be sure when the telescope will be repaired, due to the ongoing US government shutdown.

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Could we – and should we – build a laser lighthouse to make first contact with aliens?

Michael Irving November 6, 2018

Whether there’s life beyond Earth is one of the most profound questions we can ask. Making ourselves easier to find could be part of our first contact strategy. A new MIT study outlines a way to use existing or near-future tech to build a kind of laser lighthouse to signal to our cosmic neighbors.

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Space

Australian observatory hunts Earth-like planets by watching for wobbling stars

Michael Irving November 1, 2018

A new exoplanet hunting tool​ has been installed onto an Australian telescope. Dubbed Veloce, the instrument looks out for the wobble of a star caused by the gravitational tug of orbiting planets, and it specializes in red dwarfs, the most common type of star in the universe.

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Space

Dusty pseudo-satellites spotted orbiting Earth

Michael Irving October 28, 2018

Hungarian astronomers have spotted two new pseudo-satellites – in the form of clouds of dust – caught in the gravitational tug-of-war between the Earth and the Moon.

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Space

Hubble troubleshooting seems to have shaken the problem loose

Michael Irving October 23, 2018

After about 28 years of diligently studying the skies, Hubble’s future was thrown into question a few weeks ago when one of its gyroscopes failed. NASA has been working to return the telescope to working order, and now it looks like all systems are go for normal science operations to resume.

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