Archaeopteryx Credit: Peter Montgomery Jupiter’s moon Io is the most volcanic object in our solar system today, but our planet gave Io a run for its money more than 200 million years ago. At that point in our planet's history, our world was dominated by the Triassic period's great reptiles, amphibians and earliest dinosaurs. This was a time when the Earth had a single continent - Pangea - and life was wildly evolving. But the break up of Pangea into the continents we see today was one of violence and mass extinction. It has long been known that the Triassic - Jurassic boundary marks a great...
Unexpected Galaxy Photobombs Cluster
A color-composite image of PEARLSDG made with JWST NIRCAM data. Individual stars are visible as small points of light in the image. Its somewhat dull color and lack of many bright stars is consistent with its old age and lack of ongoing star formation. Credit: Image...
Quasars Spotted Blowing Away Gas
Artist’s impression of an outflow of molecular gas from the quasar J2054-0005. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO) Gas dynamics are more than a little complicated no matter where you look. The dynamics of gas in and around forming galaxies makes is particularly...
Explaining Early Bright Galaxies
A composite of Stephan’s Quintet, a visual grouping of five galaxies, constructed from almost 1,000 separate image files from the James Webb Space Telescope. UCLA astrophysicists believe if cold dark matter theories are correct, the Webb telescope should find tiny,...
Closer Look: NASA’s Day of Remembrance and Celebrating the Robots of Mars
Every year, toward the end of January, NASA sets aside a day of remembrance to look back at the three missions that were lost with astronauts aboard: Apollo 1 on Jan 27, 1967 Challenger STS 51L on Jan 28, 1986 Columbia STS 107 on Feb 1, 2003 Apollo 1 Crew (l-r):...
Iron Identified in Planet-Forming Disk
Observations with the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) found various silicate compounds and potentially iron, substances we also find in large amounts in the Solar System’s rocky planets. Credit: Jenry I’ve said it...
Alien Atmospheric Change
This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet WASP 121-b, also known as Tylos. The exoplanet’s appearance is based on Hubble data of the object. Credit: NASA, ESA, Q. Changeat et al., M. Zamani (ESA/Hubble) Astronomers have only been able to identify planets...
Closer Look: Earth’s Magnetic Field
Image by PDPics from Pixabay One of the great myths we learn from TV and books is that you can take a compass and follow it to the North Pole.Folks, I am here to tell you that if you take a compass and follow its pointy little needle, it will take you to Northern...
Distant Black Hole Caught Eating
LST-1 during observations at CTAO-North, La Palma, Spain. Credit: CTAO gGmbH. Credit: CTAO gGmbH Astronomy is theoretically the study of how our universe formed, evolved, and will one day die. But to get answers to those high-concept questions, we need to start by...
Gas Ripples Shake Up Ancient Galaxies
FIR image of BRI 1335–0417 overlaid with our identified bar ellipses (blue ellipse) and two-armed spiral structure identified in Tsukui & Iguchi (2021, black solid line). Contours start at 2σ but are logarithmically spaced in powers of 2 (2σ, 4σ, 8σ,...)....
Neutron Stars Have Quarky Cores
Artist’s impression of the different layers inside a massive neutron star, with the red circle representing a sizable quark-matter core. Credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC Ok, hold onto your brains; things are about to get dense around here. Our universe’s most massive stars...