News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On 6 January 2022, astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona discovered an asteroid roughly 70-meters (230 ft) across. Based on their initial observations, it appeared this object – called ‘2022 AE1‘ – could potentially hit Earth on its next pass, on … Read more
A well-studied solar phenomenon may not be quite as simple as we we thought it was. New simulations suggest that what we thought were loops of plasma known as coronal loops erupting out from the surface of the Sun along magnetic field lines may, at least sometimes, be wrinkles in corrugated sheets of plasma. … Read more
A new telescope taking on the task of staring at the Sun has delivered incredible new images of solar activity. The US National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope commenced science operations for the first time on Wednesday 23 February 2022. It’s the largest solar telescope in the world, and its high-resolution observations of … Read more
The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) is starting its first operational science work as it embarks on a mission to better understand our sun. DKIST is a nearly $300 million science observatory perched atop the 10,062-foot (3,067 meters) Mount Haleakalā in Maui, Hawaii. One of its main functions will be to study the corona, the … Read more
The Hubble Space Telescope continues to scout on behalf of the newly launched James Webb Space Telescope to guide future astronomy work. A stunning new image released by Hubble officials shows a single example of that collaboration: a pair of galaxies known as Arp 298, interacting 200 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Pegasus. … Read more
A group of students has confirmed that a rocket stage poised to hit the moon next month is from a Chinese Long March launcher, not a SpaceX Falcon 9 as originally thought. The rocket body, from the Chang’e 5-T1 mission, is set to slam into the moon’s far side on March 4, more than seven … Read more
A pair of asteroids orbiting the Sun formed less than 300 years ago, a new study has revealed. This makes them the youngest pair of asteroids ever discovered in the Solar System, by a factor of 10. The discovery could tell us more about how asteroids crumble, while raising some intriguing new questions. “It’s … Read more
With NASA’s newest space observatory exactly on schedule in its commissioning phase, the science team outlined their plan to make the most of this $10 billion opportunity. The James Webb Space Telescope arrived days ago at its destination at the Earth-sun Lagrange Point 2 (L2), which is about 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from our planet. … Read more
Beyond the Solar System, out there in the wider galaxy, a very strange subset of exoplanets exists. Called hot Jupiters, these are majorly clingy – hugging so close to their host stars, they’re not just intensely hot, but also likely warped by gravitational forces. Now, for the first time, astronomers have actually detected the … Read more
Astronomers have spotted the brightest “Cow” supernova ever seen in X-rays, providing shining new evidence that the recently discovered phenomenon might be driven by an emerging black hole or a neutron star. Cow supernovae are a newly-labeled subclass of the explosive events, which occur when giant stars reach the end of their lives; they run … Read more