Outer Space Blog

Astronomers recently announced that they have found a novel explanation for a rare type of super-luminous stellar explosion that may have produced a new type of object known as a quark star.

Source

Along with satellites and space stations, Earth is surrounded by tens of millions of pieces of floating space debris. Like any landfill, the trash is diverse, ranging from dead satellites to castaway rocket parts to flecks of paint. On average, over the past 40 years, one piece of space junk has fallen to Earth every day.

Source

A month after Galaxy Zoo was started and a small band of astronomers invited all comers to sift through millions of unclassified photos of never-before-seen patches of space, a primary-school teacher discovered what may be a totally novel type of celestial object, now known as Hanny’s Voorwerp.

Source

This impressive color composite shows spiral galaxy M81 across the electromagnetic spectrum. It combines X-ray data (blue) from the Chandra Observatory, infrared data (pink) from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an ultraviolet image (purple) from the GALEX satellite, with a visible light (green) Hubble image.

Source

Don’t worry, folks: our trusted representatives in government just saw the movie Armageddon, and they aren’t going to take the threat posed by this mediocre 1998 action movie lying down. They’re going to pass laws to make sure we’re prepared to face any asteroid-related threat without having to send a bunch of oil drillers into space

Source

Explanation: A weekend trip for astrophotography in central Australia can result in gorgeous skyscapes. In this example recorded in March of 2006, the center of our Milky Way Galaxy rises over planet Earth’s horizon and the large sandstone formation called Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock. After setting up two cameras to automatically image this cel

Source

“It is the type of soil you would probably have in your back yard.”

Source

Drizzle once fell on Martian soil, according to a new geochemical analysis by Berkeley scientists, though the rain probably stopped several billion years ago.

Source

One leading hypothesis holds that Hanny’s Voorwerp is a small galaxy that acts like a large reflection nebula, showing the reflected light of a bright quasar event that happened in the center of IC 2497 about 100,000 years ago.

Source

Scientists are using the giant Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to go prospecting in a rich molecular cloud in our Milky Way Galaxy. They seek to discover new, complex molecules in interstellar space that may be precursors to life. The GBT and Molecules The Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope and some molecules it has discovered. CREDIT: B

Source