Astro Blog

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-embarks-biggest-3d-map-universe By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: The European Space Agency (ESA) today  released the first pictures of galaxies  taken by its new space telescope, Euclid, which aims to help researchers understand the dark components that make up 95% of the universe. ...the Perseus Cluster..., one of the most massive structures in the universe, shows 1000 of its galaxies 240 million light-years from Earth, as well as 100,000 more distant ones, some as far away as 10 billion light-years. Over its 6-year mission, Euclid, launched in July, is  expected to take 30,000 such images , cataloging 1 billion galaxies across one-third of the sky. Researchers will use them to create the biggest 3D map of the universe, spanning three-quarters of its history....

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/feb/22/universe-breakers-james-webb-telescope-detects-six-ancient-galaxies By Hannah Devlin , The Guardian.  Excerpt: The  James Webb space telescope  has detected what appear to be six massive ancient galaxies, which astronomers are calling “universe breakers” because their existence could upend current theories of cosmology. The objects date to a time when the universe was just 3% of its current age and are far larger than was presumed possible for galaxies so early after the big bang. If confirmed, the findings would call into question scientists’ understanding of how the earliest galaxies formed....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/way-universe-ends-not-whimper-bang Source:   By Adam Mann, Science Magazine.  Excerpt: In the unimaginably far future, cold stellar remnants known as black dwarfs will begin to explode in a spectacular series of supernovae, providing the final fireworks of all time. That’s the conclusion of a new study, which posits that the universe will experience one last hurrah before everything goes dark forever. ...The known laws of physics suggest that by about 10 100  (the No. 1 followed by 100 zeros) years from now, star birth will cease, galaxies will go dark, and even black holes will evaporate through a process known as Hawking radiation, leaving little more than simple subatomic particles and energy. The expansion of space will cool that energy nearly to 0 kelvin, or absolute zero, signaling the heat death of the universe and total entropy. ...The particles in a white dwarf stay locked in a crystalline lattice that radiates heat for t...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/24/science/hubble-telescope-30th-birthday.html Source:   By Dennis Overbye, The New York Times. Excerpt: As shown in a new picture of stormy star birth in a nearby galaxy, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the cosmos is keeping up the tradition of both birth and death. Stars are being born out of the ashes of old ones, forever refreshing the universe. The picture was released Friday by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, keepers of the Hubble, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the launch of that telescope on April 24, 1990....

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/move-over-hubble-discovery-expanding-cosmos-assigned-little-known-belgian-astronomer Source:   By Daniel Clery, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Hubble’s Law, a cornerstone of cosmology that describes the expanding universe, should now be called the Hubble-Lemaître Law, following a vote by the members of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the same organization that revoked Pluto’s status as a planet. The change is designed to redress the historical neglect of Georges Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer and priest who in 1927 discovered the expanding universe—which also suggests a big bang. Lemaître published his ideas 2 years before U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble described his observations that galaxies farther from the Milky Way recede faster. ...In 1927 Lemaître calculated a solution to Albert Einstein’s general relativity equations that indicated the universe could not be static but was instead expanding. He backed up that claim with a lim...

Source:   By Glen Roberts Jr., Berkeley Lab News Center. Excerpt: WFIRST will explore mysteries of dark energy, hunt for distant planets, retrace universe's history during 6-year mission. ...The Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST) will launch into its six-year mission from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in the mid-2020s. ...The telescope will be NASA’s next major astrophysics observatory following the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in 2018. ...WFIRST is a 2.4-meter telescope with a primary mirror the same size as that of the Hubble Space Telescope. It has a field of view that is 100 times larger than Hubble’s infrared instrument and will measure light from an estimated billion galaxies. WFIRST is a 2.4-meter telescope with a primary mirror the same size as that of the Hubble Space Telescope. It has a field of view that is 100 times larger than Hubble’s infrared instrument and will measure light from an estimated billion galaxies.... http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2016/0...

Source:  NASA 12-343   Excerpt:  …Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have announced the most precise measurement yet of …the rate at which our universe is stretching apart. …It … brings the uncertainty down to 3 percent, a giant leap in accuracy for cosmological measurements.   … "Just over a decade ago, using the words 'precision' and 'cosmology' in the same sentence was not possible, and the size and age of the universe was not known to better than a factor of two," said Freedman. "Now we are talking about accuracies of a few percent." … http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/oct/HQ_12-343_Spitzer_Cepheid.html

Source:  Huang, Middle Schoolers Scale of universe animation put together by two ninth grade students.  Comments by each object.  Incredible. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html