A series of studies has shown that the seeds of supermassive black holes and relativistic jets existed much sooner than expected

The post How were Supermassive Black Holes Already Forming and Releasing Powerful Jets Shortly After the Big Bang? appeared first on Universe Today.

Astronomers like observing distant young stars as they form. Stars are born out of a molecular cloud, and once enough of the matter in that cloud clumps together, fusion ignites and a star begins its life. The leftover material from the formation of the star is called a circumstellar disk. As the material in the …

Continue reading "Are the Gaps in These Disks Caused by Planets?"

The post Are the Gaps in These Disks Caused by Planets? appeared first on Universe Today.

A new study shows how the presence of a cloud layer could make it harder for the James Webb Space Telescope to detect water on exoplanets.

The post How Will Clouds Obscure the View of Exoplanet Surfaces? appeared first on Universe Today.

Every second of every day, our sun spits out a stream of tiny high-energy particles, known as the solar wind. This wind blows throughout the solar system, extending far beyond the orbits of the planets and out into interstellar space. But the farther from the sun the wind gets, the more slowly it streams, changing …

Continue reading "The heliosphere looks a lot weirder than we originally thought"

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NASA and the University of Arizona have released a stunning new global map of asteroid Bennu. At 2 inches (5 cm) per pixel, this is the highest-resolution global map of any planetary body. This hi-res map will help guide the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft to the surface of the asteroid to collect a sample, currently scheduled for …

Continue reading "Highest Resolution Mosaic Image of the Surface of Bennu"

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The CHIME radio telescope array has detected nine new fast radio bursts on repeat, which are revealing things about this strange phenomenon

The post Even More Repeating Fast Radio Bursts Discovered appeared first on Universe Today.

Despite humanity’s current struggle against the novel coronavirus, and despite it taking up most of our attention, other threats still exist. The very real threat of a possible asteroid strike on Earth in the future is taking a backseat for now, but it’s still there. Though an asteroid strike seems kind of ephemeral right now, …

Continue reading "This Powerful Ion Engine Will Be Flying on NASA’s DART Mission to Try and Redirect an Asteroid"

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Got clear skies? If you're like us, you've been putting the recent pandemic-induced exile to productive use, and got out under the nighttime sky. And though 2020 has yet to offer up a good bright ‘Comet of the Century' to keep us entertained, there have been a steady stream of good binocular comets for northern hemisphere viewers, including C/2017 T2 PanSTARRS and C/2019 Y4 ATLAS. This week, I'd like to turn your attention to another good binocular comet that is currently at its peak: the ‘other' comet ATLAS, C/2019 Y1 ATLAS.

The post Following Comet Y1 ATLAS: the ‘Lost Comet’ of Spring appeared first on Universe Today.