Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a team led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) found a previously unknown moon orbiting Uranus, expanding the planet’s known satellite family to 29. The detection was made during a Webb observation Feb. 2, 2025. The newly discovered moon is estimated to be just six miles (10 kilometers) in …
We do not know what lies in interstellar space. There are an expected to be 300,000 larger than Death Star sized objects beyond Neptune. There are some expected moon and planet sized objects around the edge of our solar system and we cannot see them. We must search through new data from the NSF-DOE Rubin …
The Vera Rubin Telescope Observatory is now operational and is enable astronomers to explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way, objects in the solar system, and all in a truly new way. In its first 10 hours of test observations, the observatory has discovered 2,104 never-before-seen-asteroids, including seven near-Earth asteroids, none of which pose any …
Larger telescopes are better because we can see better and capture more light, so NASA is developing liquid based space telescopes that would let us build 50 meter telescopes for the cost of 10 meter telescopes. The future of space-based UV/optical/IR astronomy requires ever larger telescopes. The highest priority astrophysics targets, including Earth-like exoplanets, first …
Researchers estimate that the number of captured free-floating planets in the outer solar system with mass strictly greater than that of Mars is ∼1.2 and that the number of such planets with a strict cutoff at the mass of Mercury is ∼2.4. When they instead adopt logarithmic bins centered at the Mars mass and the …
Felix Schlang at What About It?, ercxspace on twitter and adonaisf have rendered a space telescope built inside the structure of a SpaceX Starship. Elon Musk has said SpaceX is working on designing a Space Telescope built into a Starship. The Hubble space telescope mirror is 2.4 meters across. The James Webb Space Telescope’s primary …
Tiny gram-scale interstellar probes pushed by laser light are likely to be the only technology capable of reaching another star this century and a NASA NIAC phase 1 study wants to work out the additional issues to coordinate several thousands one gram solar sails into a coordinated mission that can communicate back to Earth from …
Nextbigfuture commenter, Goat Guy, verified the resolution of very large hypertelescopes and optical interferometers. The highest angular resolutions for telescopes can be achieved by arrays of telescopes called astronomical interferometers. Hypertelescopes are being worked on that would combine many, many telescopes into very large arrays of tens, hundreds and even space based arrays of one …
The James Webb Space Telescope had a weak detection of the microbial life biomarker, dimethyl sulfide. There is a 1 in 66 chance that it was instrument noise. There will be a follow up analysis with the MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument) on the James Webb. This should scan the exoplanet K2-18B at the wavelengths for …
NASA’s James Web found trace of dimythyl suflide (DMS) in th atmosphere of exoplanet K2-18b and DMS is a biomarker of life. K2-18b’s atmosphere consists of mainly hydrogen, along with small amounts of methane and carbon dioxide. On Earth, the DMS molecule is only associated with microbial life. We have to wait for the existence …
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed K2-18 b whic an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth. It is showing the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere …