SKY NIGHTLY - Space And Astronomy News

TIME SPACE Quantum vacuum may allow stars to exist in unconventional configurations

"As a consequence of the attractive and repulsive forces at play, a massive star can either become a neutron star, or turn into a black hole" says Carballo-Rubio. In neutron stars, stellar equilibrium is the result of the "fight" between gravity, which is an a... more

EXTRA SOLAR NASA's TESS spacecraft starts science operations

TESS is expected to transmit its first series of science data back to Earth in August, and thereafter periodically every 13.5 days, once per orbit, as the spacecraft makes it closest approach to Earth. The TESS Science Team will begin searching the data for ne... more

STELLAR CHEMISTRY TESS shows North Star undergoes eclipses

"The first question that comes to mind is 'how did we miss this?'" said Angela Kochoska, a postdoctoral researcher at Villanova University in Pennsylvania who presented the findings at the 235th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu on Jan. ... more

TIME SPACE Webb telescope's largest study of universe expansion confirms challenge to cosmic theory

The new data confirms Hubble Space Telescope measurements of distances between nearby stars and galaxies, offering a crucial cross-check to address the mismatch in measurements of the universe's mysterious expansion. Known as the Hubble tension, the discrepanc... more

SOLAR SCIENCE SDO collects its 100-millionth image of Sun

On Jan. 19, 2015, at 12:49 p.m. EST, an instrument on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured its 100 millionth image of the sun. The instrument is the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly, or AIA, which uses four telescopes working parallel to gather eight images ... more

TECH SPACE With new model, buildings may 'sense' internal damage

When a truck rumbles by a building, vibrations can travel up to the structure's roof and down again, generating transient tremors through the intervening floors and beams. Now researchers at MIT have developed a computational model that makes sense of such amb... more

TECH SPACE Using a laser to 'see' the smallest world

A multi-university team has employed a high-powered laser to dramatically improve one of the tools scientists use to study the world at the atomic level. The team was able to use their amped-up electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometer to study the el... more

SPACE MEDICINE Traveling through space? Don't forget your sleeping pills and skin cream

If you are planning to take the long trip to Mars, don't forget to pack sleeping pills and skin cream. A new study published in the November 2015 issue of The FASEB Journal, is the first-ever examination of the medications used by astronauts on long-duration m... more