Topic: Stars & Nebulae
Europa Clipper Joins in on the Star Observing

Europa Clipper Joins in on the Star Observing

by | Mar 11, 2025 |

It doesn’t take a lot of telescope to make the number of visible stars radically increase, in it turns out even the Europa clipper, with its several centimeter star tracker cameras, has been regularly making its own observations.  The Clipper launched  October 14, 2024 and flew past Mars on March 1 while traveling out toward Jupiter and its moon Europa. Along the way, Clipper is checking several of its systems. At Mars, it used its thermal imager to take some test images. That was cool, but not necessary. Required for its mission are the Clipper’s star trackers which are used to very...

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Stars are Messy Cannibals

Stars are Messy Cannibals

by | May 8, 2024 |

This image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, shows the beautiful nebula NGC 6164/6165, also known as the Dragon’s Egg. The nebula is a cloud of gas and dust surrounding a pair of stars called HD 148937. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team....

Closer Look: We are Space Stuff

Closer Look: We are Space Stuff

by | Feb 28, 2024 |

Courtesy TeePublic It is possible to buy stickers, sweatshirts, mugs, and all manner of other stuff and things emblazoned with the simple phrase, “We are star stuff”. Carl Sagan popularized this phrase, and it serves as a gentle reminder that all the complex atoms -...

Neutron Stars Have Quarky Cores

Neutron Stars Have Quarky Cores

by | Dec 27, 2023 |

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...

Finding the Source of Low-Hydrogen Supernovae

Finding the Source of Low-Hydrogen Supernovae

by | Dec 20, 2023 |

Visualization of a binary star experiencing mass transfer. Credit: Ylva Götberg One factor upping the difficulty of understanding our universe is… the complexity of our universe. It sometimes feels like every time we think we’re getting a handle on how things work,...

500,000 Stars, with More Born Regularly

500,000 Stars, with More Born Regularly

by | Dec 6, 2023 |

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia) Our Solar System lives in a nice suburb of the Milky Way. Sitting about 25,000 light years from the galactic center, we’re in a good place to view what’s happening in the core district, but far...