• #DarkMatter was first theorized in the 📆 1930s to explain movements of #stars 🎇 and #galaxies 🌌 that couldn't be explained by Newton's laws of gravity.
How much #darkmatter might be crossing your finger right now?
What is the expected detection rate by a typical detector of dark matter?
A new #AstroPhysicsFactlet with a staggering amount of orders of magnitude of uncertainty!
New episode just dropped people (and other species)...
A Tale of Two Telescopes
We’re delighted to bring you the conversational style of Dr Stephen Wilkins, public engagement extraordinaire. This episode, we have the Tale of Two Telescopes, exploring NASA’s new flagship James Webb Space Telescope, and ESA’s pioneering Euclid, set to uncover the Dark Universe. Enjoy!
Coming Monday (31. July) we will declare "First Light" for #ESAEuclid 🛰️ and show the first engineering images that the #VIS and #NISP instruments 📷 have taken of the sky, using a fully focussed telescope! 🔭
Yay! 🥳
That said, #Euclid has now also arrived at its ultimate distance from Earth, circling around the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 2 😎🌏🛰️ - joining #ESAGaia and #JWST:
#ESAEuclid's issues with the Fine Guidance Sensor 🧭 are being worked on by industry 👨🏽🏭 👷🏿♀️ , with tests first on ground before upload to the #Euclid spacecraft 🛰️.
Update on #ESAEuclid 🛰️: the spacecraft - let's not call it an observatory or telescope yet - is doing fine. Safely cruising towards L2 beyond the Moon 🌕.
The "LEOP" (Launch and Early Orbit Phase) has been completed after a little less than 2 days and the first planned orbit correction maneuvre went well. Now the month-long "commissioning" phase started: instrument and telescope control computers have been turned on to monitor and regulate cooldown.
The first engineering images from #ESA’s #Euclid mission are set to be released on Monday (July 31, 2023), which will provide new insights into the mysteries of the cosmos. The goal is to help us understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, and how they impact the course of the universe.
Congratulations to the team that make up the #Euclid mission on their successful launch! We can't wait to see what mysteries of the dark universe this space telescope will uncover.
Watched the third episode of #DarkMatter last night. Cliffhanger ending right at the big moment. Looking forward to next episode where the proper reveal is.
Update on #ESAEuclid#commissioning: while the whole spacecraft 🛰️ continues to cool down, the #VIS instrument checked out its electronics, shutter, and calibration lamp 💡 and they all react as expected. The #NISP instrument has rotated its filter and grism wheels 🎡 successfully.
Next up is full VIS & NISP commissioning, before the telescope 🔭 optics will undergo a week of alignment & focussing.
Measuring acceleration in 26 pulsars, authors report:
Sun experiencing 1mm/s/yr acceleration away from Galactic centre, comparable to the gravitational force of a Jupiter-mass object 400 AU away (not Planet 9).
Mass enclosed within 8kpc of Galactic centre is ~2.3 times larger than accepted models.
I need to read (and understand this a bit better) but I think that the uncertainties in some of the distance and parallax measurements of the pulsars might introduce big enough overall uncertainties that could affect the outcomes reported here. Will be watching how this plays out!
Massive galaxy with no dark matter is a cosmic puzzle (www.space.com)
"This result does not fit in with the currently accepted cosmological models, which include dark matter."
Will Scientists Ever Find a Theory of Everything? (archive.is)
Physicists are on an ever urgent quest to find a fuller understanding of what makes the cosmos tick, which they call a theory of everything