We have found more than 4,000 planets orbiting other stars. Life on distant worlds could find us in the same way.

The post We use the transit method to find other planets. Which extraterrestrial civilizations could use the transit method to find Earth? appeared first on Universe Today.

Crews aboard the ISS are working to repair the leak, which posed no significant risk. Unfortunately, it shows that the ISS is getting on in years!

The post The Oxygen Supply has Failed in the Russian Zvezda Module of the ISS. Don’t Worry, the Astronauts aren’t in Danger, but the Station is Showing its Age appeared first on Universe Today.

Out in the asteroid belt, 207 million miles (334 million km) from Earth, a little spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of Asteroid Bennu today, attempting to collect samples of dust and rocks. NASA?s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) spent about 10 seconds on the ancient asteroid to collect …

Continue reading "Success! OSIRIS-REx Touches Asteroid Bennu to Collect Samples"

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In the last year, Betelgeuse has experienced two episodes of dimming. Normally, it’s one of the ten brightest stars in the sky, and astrophysicists and astronomers got busy trying to understand what was happening with the red supergiant. Different research came up with some possible answers: Enormous starspots, a build-up of dust, pre-supernova convulsions. Now …

Continue reading "Wow, Betelgeuse Might Be 25% Closer than Previously Believed"

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It’s been over a thousand days since the historic kilonova observation, and yet the region continues to emit X-rays, long after models predicted they should have faded away. What’s going on? August 2017 was a pretty momentous month in astronomy. The gravitational wave detectors LIGO and VIRGO spotted the unique signature of two colliding neutron …

Continue reading "It’s still possible to detect the site of the 2017 kilonova explosion"

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Today?s the day! The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is going to reach out and boop asteroid Bennu! You can watch the broadcast here as the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission attempts to collect a sample of an asteroid on Tuesday, Oct. 20, at 6:12 pm EDT (5:12 pm CDT, 3:12 PDT). Live coverage …

Continue reading "Watch “Live” as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Nabs an Asteroid Sample"

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January 31, 2021, will mark 50 years since the launch of Apollo 14. This historic mission was the first to broadcast a color television signal from the surface of the Moon and marked the heroic return to space of America?s first astronaut, Alan Shepard, who famously hit two golf balls off of the lunar regolith. …

Continue reading "You?ll Experience 200 Times More Radiation Standing on the Moon than Standing on the Earth"

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It looks like Russia is thumbing its nose at international cooperation on the Moon. They’ve refused to sign the Artemis Accords, which are a set of rules governing Lunar exploration. NASA and seven other countries have signed on already, with more to come. Russia is NASA’s largest partner in space exploration. The two countries are …

Continue reading "NASA and Seven Countries Sign the Artemis Accords for the Exploration of the Moon. Russia Declined to Participate"

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An international team of astronomers recommends creating "Betelgeuse Scope" to monitor this mysterious star find out why it has been acting so strangely of late!

The post What’s Happening with Betelgeuse? Astronomers Propose a Specialized Telescope to Watch the Star Every Night appeared first on Universe Today.

The dwarf galaxy known as Dragonfly 44 caused a stir recently: apparently it had way, way more dark matter than any other galaxy. Since this couldn’t be explained by our models of galaxy formation, it seemed like an oddball. But a new analysis reveals that Dragonfly 44 has much less dark matter than previously thought. …

Continue reading "The galaxy with 99.99% dark matter isn’t so mysterious any more"

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