If successful, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity’s upcoming flight will be the first powered, guided flight on another planet. The earliest test flight is now scheduled for Wednesday, April 14.
In this illustration, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter stands on the red planet's surface as the Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech.
The long-sought “lost golden city” of Aten has been found near Luxor, Egypt, in the Valley of Kings. “The mission expects to uncover untouched tombs filled with treasures,” the scientists said.
Walls in the newly discovered 'lost city' near Luxor in Egypt. Image via Times of Israel/ Zahi Hawass Center For Egyptology.
Beta Centauri isn’t as famous as Alpha Centauri, but together, these brilliant Southern Hemisphere stars have inspired legends and guided mariners.
In this image taken at the European Southern Observatory’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, the Southern Cross is clearly visible, with the yellowish star, closest to the dome, marking the top of the cross. Drawing a line downward through the crossbar stars takes you to the bluish star, Beta Centauri, and then to the yellowish Alpha Centauri. Image via ESO / Wikimedia Commons.
Our closest stellar neighbors are the 3 stars that make up the Alpha Centauri system. They lie just over 4 light-years – about 25 trillion miles or 38 trillion km – away.
Alpha Centauri, the third-brightest star in the sky, photographed in Coonabarabran, NSW, Australia by Alan Dyer. A faint swarm of stars to the right is the star cluster NGC 5617. Across the field, patches of dark interstellar dust clouds obscure stars in our Milky Way Galaxy. Image via Alan Dyer/AmazingSky.com.
NASA’s Juno spacecraft – whose mission in orbit around Jupiter was recently extended to 2025 – has been used to discover a rapidly expanding auroral ring at the very fringes of the Jovian magnetosphere.
This illustration shows the auroral oval on Jupiter in ultraviolet wavelengths. Image via NASA/ JPL-Caltech/ SwRI.
For the first time, scientists have detected X-rays being emitted by the planet Uranus. The discovery was made by a new analysis of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
The planet Uranus is surrounded by thin rings. This world rotates on its side with respect to the plane of our solar system. This composite image is composed of both X-ray and visible light images. The X-ray emission appears here as pink, and the visible light as blue. Image via NASA/ Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Posted by Larry Sessions in Astronomy Essentials | Clusters Nebulae Galaxies|3 days ago
Myriads of galaxies, visible only to those with medium-to-large telescopes, shine among the stars in the “Realm of the Galaxies.” Study of the Coma Cluster of galaxies aided in the discovery of dark matter.
Almost every object you see in this photo is a galaxy. The Coma Cluster of galaxies contains as many as 10,000 galaxies, each housing billions of stars. Image via Justin Ng.
Posted by Kelly Kizer Whitt in Astronomy Essentials | Human World|4 days ago
Celebrate dark night skies and help limit light pollution by raising awareness through the annual International Dark Sky Week, April 5 to 12, 2021. Find links to global events here.
Use this poster to help spread the word: It's International Dark Sky Week! Celebrate April 5 to 12, 2021, by teaching others the night sky. Image via IDA.
Around 80 million years ago, as tyrannosaurs ruled the Northern Hemisphere, Llukalkan aliocranianus – or the ‘one who causes fear’ – flourished in the southern continents.
An international team of astronomers has mapped a piece of the cosmic web without using bright quasars for the first time. They did it by turning a powerful instrument to a single region of the sky for hundreds of hours.
This image looks in the direction of our constellation Fornax the Furnace, to a time 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Each point of light is a galaxy. You can see a filament between the galaxies, tracing the path of the cosmic web. See the full image, below. Image (c) ESO / NASA/ Roland Bacon et al.