Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Perseverance Lands – NASA’s latest planetary mission, a rover named Perseverance, landed on Mars February 18. The rover weighs over a ton on Earth, and is seven feet high and ten feet long, plus an arm that extends out.… Continue reading.
By Dena McClung
The Denver Astronomical Society 2021 Executive Board Election wrapped up at 9 p.m. on February 26, during the February Annual Meeting, with both the meeting and the election held online. For the first time, members were able to vote even if they did not attend the meeting itself.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Supernova Age – A new analysis of a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud by scientists at Purdue University shows that the supernova should have been visible in the far south of Earth 1,700 years ago, but no record has been found of it having been seen.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Dark Matter Mystery Solved – In 2018 and 2019, astronomers reported finding two small galaxies that appeared to have little if any dark matter. This is unusual as essentially all galaxies measured for it contain far more dark matter than ordinary matter.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
OSIRIS-REx is the space probe that flew by the small near-Earth asteroid Bennu on October 20 and collected a sample of its surface material. When its controllers in mission control took images of the sample mechanism, they found that the sampling had been overly successful.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Nobel Prizes – The Nobel Prize committee includes astronomy as part of physics and this year three astronomers split the physics prize. Roger Penrose received half of the award for his mathematical work on the properties, even existence, of black holes.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Most Massive Black Hole Merger – The largest black holes ever observed to merge were detected by the LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors. The black holes were 85 and 66 times the Sun’s mass and merged to form one of 142 solar masses.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Dense Exoplanet – Observations by astronomers at the Pennsylvania State University found an unusually dense exoplanet orbiting a star in the Hyades open star cluster. Known as K2-25b, it is slightly smaller than Neptune but about 1.5 times as massive.… Continue reading.
Astronomy and space news summarized by Don Lynn from NASA and other sources
Mass Gap Breached – The largest known neutron star is about 2.2 times the mass of the Sun, which aligns with theoretical projections that predict a neutron star should collapse into a black hole at about this mass.… Continue reading.