Tag: Astrophysics
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NASA’s Webb Provides Crash Course on Planet-Shattering Collisions
In the early history of our solar system, scientists theorize that a Mars-sized object called Theia smashed into the infant Earth, vaporizing massive amounts of rock and blasting it into space. Some of that material coalesced into the Moon, where…
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NASA Highlights Lessons Learned From Swift Boost Mission
A commercial mission to boost NASA’s Swift observatory concluded without raising the spacecraft’s orbit, but the agency and industry vendor gained valuable experience that will benefit future in-space servicing programs.
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NASA’s Hubble Seeks Lensed Supernova, Marks 200,000 Orbits
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope completed its 200,000th orbit around Earth on Sept. 19, marking another new milestone for an observatory that continues to transform our understanding of the universe. Hubble has traveled more than 5 billion miles around Earth over…
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NASA-JAXA XRISM Mission Sees Pulsar Gathering Companion’s ‘Wind’
Using data from the Japan-led XRISM (X-ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission) observatory, astronomers have directly observed a giant star’s outflow, called a stellar wind, being captured by its compact companion and providing the power source for strong X-ray flares. The…
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NASA’s Hubble Spots an Out-of-Sync Galaxy
Though the spiral galaxy in this new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope seems serene, it hides a chaotic secret. This galaxy is NGC 4698, and it lies about 55 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo. It’s one…
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NASA’s Webb Reveals Dynamic Panorama of Star Formation
This starry view of the nearby star-forming region IC 348 is one of the largest images released to date from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Using Webb, astronomers searched IC 348 for brown dwarfs, which are less massive than the…
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NASA’s Chandra Unveils Mysterious X-Ray Objects
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists have discovered a new class of objects behaving unlike any they have seen before. Astronomers suggest these newly spotted objects in other galaxies may help solve not one, but two long-standing questions in astrophysics.…
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NASA’s Hubble, Webb Find Far-out Solar System Objects ‘Remember’ Past
For the first time, scientists used the joint power of NASA’s Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes to study some of the most far-flung bodies in our solar system, Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Some of these are the smallest and faintest…
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NASA’s Hubble Spies Superbubble Scene
This Hubble Space Telescope image features a sprawling cosmic vista called N44.
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NASA’s Hubble Tracks New Decagon Encircling Saturn’s South Pole
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope observes a giant, evolving, 10-sided atmospheric wave encircling Saturn’s south pole.