News about PaperPanda, Open Access, and Research
The golden spiral arms of a distant galaxy sparkle in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as NGC 4254 or Messier 99, is an example of a grand design spiral galaxy, which has prominent, well-defined spiral arms that wrap tightly around the galaxy’s center. Located 49 million light-years from Earth … Read more
Dogs might not be able to recognize themselves in a mirror, but that doesn’t mean our pets don’t have some level of self-awareness. Recent research has shown dogs can recognize the unique smell of their own odor, sort of like looking in an ‘olfactory mirror’, and in 2021, a study found they might also have … Read more
Time-lapse imaging of Yutu 2 progress across the lunar landscape. (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) China’s Yutu 2 rover has returned a view of its path over three years of travels across the harsh environment of the moon’s far side. The new images — released by Ourspace, a Chinese language science outreach channel affiliated with … Read more
A powerful new picture of Jupiter posted by a citizen scientist shows the planet looming large with the shadow of its biggest moon Ganymede blanketing its clouds. The image comes from Kevin M. Gill, who posted copies on Twitter and Flickr after analyzing data from the Juno spacecraft’s 20th close flyby of May 2019. Like … 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
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
Young stars surround a supermassive black hole in a stunning new image captured by an instrument designed to search for dark energy. The image shows a face-on view of the galaxy NGC 1566, which is nicknamed the Spanish Dancer for its dramatic swirling shape. The photograph comes from an instrument called the Dark Energy Camera, … Read more
A stunning drone video from SpaceX shows the company taking apart the fully stacked Starship it plans to launch into orbit later this year. The waterside view on Twitter, posted Saturday (Feb. 19), shows the giant Starship rocket on a crane next to the Super Heavy booster that will attempt the company’s first orbital flight. … Read more
Three galaxies collide in this stunning new Hubble Space Telescope image showing the galaxy cluster IC 2431 about 681 million light-years from Earth. (Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, W. Keel, Dark Energy Survey, Department of Energy, Fermilab, Dark Energy Survey Camera, (DECam), Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, NoirLab/National Science Foundation/AURA, Sloan Digital Sky Survey; Acknowledgment: J. … Read more
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) captured stunning views of February’s Full Snow Moon this week. Full moons occur when the moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun, which happens roughly every 29.5 days. The Full Snow Moon arrived on Wednesday (Feb. 16) at 11:57 a.m. EST (0457 GMT), … Read more