अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान – आवारा मुसाफिर

Extreme supersonic winds measured on planet outside our Solar System

January 21, 202590 Views

Astronomers have discovered extremely powerful winds pummeling the equator of WASP-127b, a giant exoplanet. Reaching speeds up to 33 000 km/h, the winds make up the fastest jetstream of its kind ever measured on a planet. The discovery was made using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) in Chile and provides unique insights into the weather patterns of a distant world. Tornados, cyclones and hurricanes wreak havoc on Earth, but scientists have now detected planetary winds on an entirely different scale, far outside the Solar System. Ever since its discovery in 2016, astronomers have been investigating the weather on WASP-127b, a giant gas planet located over 500 light-years from Earth. The planet is slightly larger than Jupiter, but has only a fraction...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञानखबरनामाघटनाएंस्वीडन

Swedish Red Cottage flies to the Moon

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

January 10, 202599 Views

Historic Space Launch On 15 January At exactly 01:11 AM (UTC-5), on 15 January, a little piece of Sweden will boldly go where no red cottage has gone before. History is about to be made as the Swedish MoonHouse takes off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mastermind behind this cosmic escapade? Swedish artist Mikael Genberg, who cheekily admits, "It only took 25 years." Turns out, turning a whimsical idea into lunar reality is no small feat. The Swedish MoonHouse Computer Rendered A cottage like no other This isn't the plot of Fly Me to the Moon or the next blockbuster sci-fi. Soon, an original Swedish red cottage – the iconic symbol of Swedish charm – will set up shop on the Moon. It's not a vacation rental (yet), but a testament to Genberg's passion for blending art, ...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञानघटनाएंचिली

World’s darkest and clearest skies at risk from industrial megaproject

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

January 10, 2025124 Views

On December 24th, AES Andes, a subsidiary of the US power company AES Corporation, submitted a project for a massive industrial complex for environmental impact assessment. This complex threatens the pristine skies above ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the darkest and clearest of any astronomical observatory in the world. The industrial megaproject is planned to be located just 5 to 11 kilometres from telescopes at Paranal, which would cause irreparable damage to astronomical observations, in particular due to light pollution emitted throughout the project’s operational life. Relocating the complex would save one of Earth's last truly pristine dark skies. An irreplaceable heritage for humanity Since its inauguration in 1999, Paranal Observatory, built ...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

NASA spacecraft ‘safe’ after closest-ever approach to Sun

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

December 28, 202475 Views

NASA said on Friday that its Parker Solar Probe was "safe" and operating normally after successfully completing the closest-ever approach to the Sun by any human-made object. The spacecraft passed 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface on Dec. 24, flying into the sun's outer atmosphere called the corona, on a mission to help scientists learn more about Earth's closest star. The agency said the operations team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland received the signal, a beacon tone, from the probe just before midnight on Thursday. FILE PHOTO: An artist's concept shows the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft flying into the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona, on a mission to help scientists learn more about the Sun. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/S...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

First ever binary star found near our galaxy’s supermassive black hole

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December 17, 2024545 Views

An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole. The discovery, based on data collected by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), helps us understand how stars survive in environments with extreme gravity, and could pave the way for the detection of planets close to Sagittarius A. “Black holes are not as destructive as we thought,” says Florian Peißker, a researcher at the University of Cologne, Germany, and lead author of the study published today in Nature Communications. Binary stars, pairs of stars orbiting each other, are very common in the Universe, b...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

Astronomers take the first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy

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November 21, 2024369 Views

“For the first time, we have succeeded in taking a zoomed-in image of a dying star in a galaxy outside our own Milky Way,” says Keiichi Ohnaka, an astrophysicist from Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile. Located a staggering 160 000 light-years from us, the star WOH G64 was imaged thanks to the impressive sharpness offered by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). The new observations reveal a star puffing out gas and dust, in the last stages before it becomes a supernova. This is an image of the star WOH G64, taken by the GRAVITY instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (ESO’s VLTI). The bright oval at the centre of this image is a dusty cocoon that enshrouds the star. A fainter elliptical ring a...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

New ESO image captures a dark wolf in the sky

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October 31, 2024365 Views

For Halloween, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals this spooktacular image of a dark nebula that creates the illusion of a wolf-like silhouette against a colourful cosmic backdrop. Fittingly nicknamed the Dark Wolf Nebula, it was captured in a 283-million-pixel image by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. This collage highlights some details within the huge Dark Wolf Nebula, such as the wolf’s “head”, seen here in the top-centre image. The pillars in the images to the right form when intense radiation from young stars encounters dense pockets of dust and gas. This radiation erodes and blows away the lighter material around these dense pockets, creating these pillar-like structures. Credit: ESO/VPHAS+ team Found in the constellation Scorp...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

Space oddity: Most distant rotating disc galaxy found

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 7, 2024419 Views

Researchers have discovered the most distant Milky-Way-like galaxy yet observed. Dubbed REBELS-25, this disc galaxy seems as orderly as present-day galaxies, but we see it as it was when the Universe was only 700 million years old. This is surprising since, according to our current understanding of galaxy formation, such early galaxies are expected to appear more chaotic. The rotation and structure of REBELS-25 were revealed using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) is a partner. The galaxies we see today have come a long way from their chaotic, clumpy counterparts that astronomers typically observe in the early Universe. “According to our understanding of galaxy formation, we expect most early galaxies to be small a...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

Scientists discover planet orbiting closest single star to our Sun

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October 1, 2024173 Views

Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts just over three Earth days. The team’s observations also hint at the existence of three more exoplanet candidates, in various orbits around the star. Located just six light-years away, Barnard’s star is the second-closest stellar system — after Alpha Centauri’s three-star group — and the closest individual star to us. Owing to its proximity, it is a primary target in the search for Earth-like exoplanets. Despite a promising detection back in 2018, no planet orbiting Barnard's star had been confirmed until now. This ar...

अंतरिक्ष विज्ञान

Most detailed infrared map ever of our Milky Way captured

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

September 26, 2024176 Views

Astronomers have published a gigantic infrared map of the Milky Way containing more than 1.5 billion objects ― the most detailed one ever made. Using the European Southern Observatory’s VISTA telescope, the team monitored the central regions of our Galaxy over more than 13 years. At 500 terabytes of data, this is the largest observational project ever carried out with an ESO telescope. “We made so many discoveries, we have changed the view of our Galaxy forever,” says Dante Minniti, an astrophysicist at Universidad Andrés Bello in Chile who led the overall project. This image shows the regions of the Milky Way mapped by the VISTA Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey and its companion project, the VVV eXtended survey (VVVX). The total area covered is equivalent to 8600 full moons...