It’s #NewstodonFriday — such a shame it’s been a slow news week! Just to refresh your memories, this is a day to feature work from newsrooms with an active presence in the #Fediverse. If you like what you see in the (long!) thread below, follow the profiles and boost their stories. If you’re a journo or newsroom that we don’t know about or if there’s a newsroom you’d love to put on our radar, please let us know in the comments below.
Three astronomy undergraduates at MIT and their professor discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe. @gbhnews interviewed them about the field of stellar archeology and the “cannibalistic process” of galaxy growth.
Messier 53 (M53) is a globular cluster located in the constellation Coma Berenices. Messier 53 reaches its annual culmination at astronomical midnight around April 10th.
Solar Storms Create Wondrous Auroras—But Dangerous Power Surges - The next potential space voltage could be on the horizon very soon, by Meg St-Esprit May 28, 2024
"...We are far from a time where we can predict solar weather with the accuracy of terrestrial weather, says Mike Bettwy, but it’s improving every day. “That’s why it’s really, really critical to have constant monitoring and imaging,” he says. “Now, if we see in a satellite image of a solar flare, we can actually run a model to try to predict how it is going to interact with the Earth’s atmosphere.” That wasn’t possible in the past, which meant solar storms were potentially much more dangerous before..."
Soon the telescope platform at ESO's Paranal Observatory in #Chile will look very different at night: all four of the 8.2 m telescopes of the VLT will be equipped with lasers! This is one of the ongoing upgrades of the GRAVITY+ instrument, which will allow us to study black holes, stars and planets like never before.
The excellent collaboration image between astronomers Mark Hanso and Martin Pugh shows the peculiar planetary nebula HFG-2, also cataloged as PK 247-04 1 among other designations. It is a sphere with a network-shaped structure, whose filaments connect with each other and shows a possible opening to the south. This planetary nebula appears to be..... #astronomy#space#astrophysics#astrophotography
Astronomers using JWST have just identified the earliest, most distant galaxy known. This image shows JADES-GS-z14-0 as it was when the universe was 2.2% its current age.
Yesterday, Unistellar co-founder and CSO Franck Marchis presented the Cosmic Cataclysm program at Explore Scientific's 150th Global Star Party. He highlighted the incredible efforts of his colleagues at the SETI Institute in monitoring, observing, and analyzing data from novas and supernovas. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB8HBI-swO8&t=5288s
A List - 12 Ancient Scientific Instruments You Can Still See Today - These incredible tools were used to understand the world thousands of years ago. (Atlas Obscura)
"...These mechanisms, some of which date back as far as 5,000 years ago, were developed on different continents by a wide range of cultures, from advanced metallurgy in India to the influential astronomical calendars of the ancient Maya. Amazingly, some of these ancient scientific instruments have been preserved through the millennia, and can be visited today. Each provides a window into how our ancestors made sense of the world around them..."
This ensures that more big, bright #satellites are coming: "A Block 1 satellite would have 10 times the capacity of the company’s 1,500-kilogram BlueWalker-3 prototype; [Block2] would be twice as big and have 10 times the capacity of a Block 1 BlueBird." (via @spacenews_inc)
(Also, a reminder that this comms mode is potentially very harmful to ground-based radio astronomy.)
Fun things that can happen at a conference: tomorrow there will be a heated discussion about the correct way to remove a foreground from an extragalactic observation - the sort of life and death fights you have in astronomy 😅
But guess how many experts in the actual observation and foreground modelling are present at this conference:
ZERO.
So chairs are likely going to be thrown for nothing...
New, on @TheConversationUS:
I'm an Astrophysicist mapping the Universe with data from #ChandraXRay: Clear, sharp photos help me study energetic black holes.
When I was born, we still didn't have evidence that there were planets around other suns. Now you can observe them in your backyard. That's pretty amazing, if you ask me!