Astro Blog

By Lisa Grossman , Science News.  Excerpt: Perched on a high, flat-topped mountain called Cerro Pachón, the Rubin Observatory ...can investigate some of the universe’s slowest, most eternal processes, such as the assembly of galaxies and the expansion of the cosmos. And by mapping the entire southern sky every couple of nights, it can track some of the universe’s fastest and most ephemeral events, including exploding stars and  visits from interstellar comets . ...Rubin data will be made available online to anyone in the world, from professional astronomers to elementary school students. ...the observatory has what’s now the  largest digital camera ever built ...at 1.65 meters wide...It combines 189 individual CCDs...roughly the same number of pixels as 260 smartphone cameras. ...In June, the telescope hit another big milestone:  releasing Rubin’s first images  to the public. ...the Rubin team shared videos made up of hundreds of individual images from...

By Steve Schulze et al, Nature.  Abstract: Stars are initially powered by the fusion of hydrogen to helium. These ashes serve as fuel in a series of stages 1 , 2 , 3 , transforming massive stars into a structure of shells. These are composed of natal hydrogen on the outside and consecutively heavier compositions inside, predicted to be dominated by He, C/O, O/Ne/Mg and O/Si/S (refs.  4 , 5 ). Silicon and sulfur are fused into iron, leading to the collapse of the core and either a supernova explosion or the formation of a black hole 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 . ...Here we report the discovery of the supernova (SN) 2021yfj resulting from a star stripped to its O/Si/S-rich layer. We directly observe a thick, massive Si/S-rich shell, expelled by the progenitor shortly before the supernova explosion.... [From ScienceAdvisor: Researchers spotted the consequential supernova, called SN 2021yfj, from California’s Zwicky Transient Facility, .... They found that the exploded star was about 60 times the ...

By Sarah Stanley , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Spectacular aurorae dance and shimmer nearly continuously at Jupiter’s poles. ...Sometimes, Jupiter’s aurorae grow much brighter for hours or days at a time. ... clarifying the solar wind’s role  in any one brightening event would require taking simultaneous measurements of Jupiter’s magnetosphere and aurorae and their relationship with the solar wind—a difficult undertaking. ...NASA’s  Juno mission  has made such simultaneous measurements possible.  Giles et al.  used data... from two of Juno’s onboard instruments...as Juno neared Jupiter in its elliptical orbit on 6 December, the spacecraft was overtaken by the outer edge of the shrinking magnetosphere before later reentering it closer to Jupiter. ...Another of Juno’s instruments, its ultraviolet spectrograph, measured the aurora’s peak power at this time to be 12 terawatts—6 times its baseline power level. ...the researchers concluded that the powerful auroral d...