Our New Horizons spacecraft is making its final approach to #UltimaThule, an icy object located ~1 billion miles past Pluto! Get the latest updates and find out where and when to watch the most distant planetary flyby ever this #NewYearsEve : http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
#UltimaThule is an icy rock located ~1 billion miles past Pluto in the Kuiper Belt. On #NewYearsEve, our New Horizons spacecraft will fly within 2,220 miles of this object, providing the first close-up look at such a pristine building block of the solar system. Get the latest update:
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Probably my biggest regret when I made the Hubble Deep Field in 3D video is saying the phrase “these galaxies are racing away from us, in some cases faster than light”.
Continue reading “How Can Galaxies Travel Faster Than Light?” »
A newly discovered pink-colored object is the most-distant body ever observed in the solar system—and the first object ever found orbiting at more than 100 times the distance from Earth to the sun.
The pink-colored object is nearly four times more distant from the sun than Pluto, and hints at the possibility of an as-yet-undiscovered giant planet farther out.
On #NewYearsEve, our New Horizons spacecraft will fly within 2,220 miles of this object, providing the first close-up look at such a pristine building block of the solar system. Get the latest update: http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/
The Space Force would constitute the sixth branch of the US armed forces.
The news: During a meeting with the National Space Council today, President Donald Trump directed the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to begin work on the creation of the Space Force. He stated, “‘We are going to have the Air Force and we’re going to have the Space Force, separate but equal.”
Some background: This isn’t the first time Trump has brought up this idea. He has continued to express interest in the idea during visits to West Point and in speeches to military members.
Continue reading “Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to create the US Space Force” »
A team from Cornell is out to prove that water is all you need to send an aircraft flying in space. They will attempt to send a CubeSat, a tiny satellite no bigger than a cereal box, to orbit the moon.
This particular region is located over 66,000 light years from Earth and at on opposite side of the Milky Way, relative to our Solar System. The previous record for a parallax measurement was about 36,000 light-years, roughly 11,000 light years farther than the distance between our Solar System and the center of our galaxy. As Sanna explained, this accomplishment in radio astronomy will enable surveys that reach much farther than previous ones:
“Most of the stars and gas in our Galaxy are within this newly-measured distance from the Sun. With the VLBA, we now have the capability to measure enough distances to accurately trace the Galaxy’s spiral arms and learn their true shapes.”
Hundreds of star-forming regions exist within the Milky Way. But as Karl Menten – a member of the MPIfR and a co-author on the study – explained, this study was significant because of where this one is located. “So we have plenty of ‘mileposts’ to use for our mapping project,” he said. “But this one is special: Looking all the way through the Milky Way, past its center, way out into the other side.”
Continue reading “Astronomers have begun mapping the structure of the far side of the Milky Way” »
2019 is featuring five eclipses, a rare planet transit, one of the best meteor showers and a super blood wolf moon, but the fun doesn’t stop there.
The new year will also bring three supermoons, a blue moon, multiple meteor showers, close approach by the moon and Jupiter and several rocket launches.
Although we would love to talk about all of the extraordinary occurrences, these are our top events to watch for in the sky in 2019:
