Ready to feel old? The Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 29th trip around the Sun this week. It launched on board the space shuttle Discovery on April 24, 1990.
To mark the occasion, astronomers released this image of the Southern Crab Nebula. It's an interesting situation where a white dwarf and red giant star are in a binary pairing. The red giant is dying and blasting out its outer layers, which are being picked up and whipped around by its white dwarf companion. Every now and then the white dwarf picks up too much material, flashes as a nova, and creates these bizarre structures in the nebula.
Happy space birthday Hubble! Fraser Cain
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In this week's questions show, I wonder if planets could form from the wreckage around dead stars, who don't all stars collapse immediately into black holes, and where did my new channel pic come from? Featuring Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder Subscribe to our podcasts:
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The hunt for exoplanets is in full effect now, with thousands already found, and many more awaiting confirmation. But it's really mindblowing to think that the closest star to the Sun, Proxima Centauri, has at least one confirmed planet orbiting it. And that planet is in the star's habitable zone! Of course, the star is pretty unstable, throwing off killer flares from time to time, so maybe you don't want to move there just yet.
NASA's Mars InSight has been mostly successful so far, landing on the Red Planet safely and proceeding with its experiments. But there's been one big problem, its "Mole" drill designed to put a temperature probe several meters deep into the Martian regolith, is stuck. And nobody knows why. Now German engineers have built a special sandbox with different obstacles to try and figure out what's blocking progress.
Last week I said that Falcon Heavy's second launch was a complete success. Well, it turns out you shouldn't count your boosters until they're safely in port. The central core landed safely on the Drone Ship "Of Course I Still Love You", but it couldn't be held down securely. The high waves were too much to keep it balanced, it fell over, and most of its upper structure was lost at sea. You can see a picture of the shattered remains here.
Last week we reported on the sad news that SpaceIL's Beresheet lander crashed into the Moon. I mean, it's a landing right? The XPrize announced they were still going to award the SpaceIL team a $1 million prize for their achievement of, uh, crashing a private lunar lander into the Moon. Now we've gotten the word that SpaceIL is going to try again with Beresheet 2.
The Interstellar movie opened our minds to the possibility of traveling instantly through space using wormholes. Well, hold on a second, according to new research you might want to change your travel plans. Although it is, technically, possible to travel through a wormhole (although, we don't know if they're even possible to make), the trip would take longer than just going the regular way, through space. Sorry, you're going to have to keep building your generation ships.
Since Curiosity first landed on Mars, NASA scientists have wanted the rover to get its science instruments into a special, clay-rich region of the Red Planet. Well, they've finally had their wish, and the rover has plunged its drill into an exposed rock made of clay-rich materials. Clays are important, of course, because they can only form in the presence of liquid water. And here on Earth, liquid water means life. I'll let you know if they find any.
High speed internet, almost anywhere on the planet? Yes please. That's the promise of SpaceX's low-Earth orbiting satellite constellation. But the question has always been, when will we get it? Now we know that SpaceX is planning to relentlessly launch 2,200 satellites over the next 5 years to make this internet fantasy a reality. I'm ready.
The Moon shows up every month, relentlessly, to ruin our astrophotography. But if you want a challenge, try to see how early you can take a picture of the Moon after its illuminated side is completely away from us - a New Moon. Astronomers have been pushing right to the limit, and David Dickinson explains how you can get a photo of the newest possible Moon.
Another reminder that you might not want to live on a planet orbiting a red dwarf star. Astronomers from the University of Warwick just published a paper on a red dwarf star that has the same size as Jupiter - a tenth the radius of the Sun - and how that star can deliver devastating solar flares: 10 times more powerful than anything our Sun has ever delivered. Planets in the habitable zone, huddled up close to the ultracool star would receive constant doses of lethal radiation.
We lost the Kepler Space Telescope, but NASA's TESS is going strong, finding new exoplanets. And this week astronomers announced that it had found its first Earth-sized world orbiting an orange main-sequence star called HD 21749. That's not the only one, it also has a hot sub-Neptune planet as well. Neither are habitable, though.
One of the most exciting discoveries made by NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn's moon Titan was its liquid methane lakes, seas and rivers. And now it turns out the seas are bigger and deeper than planetary scientists originally expected. Some of these lakes can go as deep as 100 meters. Obviously we need to go back, with a submarine mission that can explore these seas more fully.
SpaceX isn't the only company trying to revolutionize access to space. Stratolaunch, a company founded by the late Paul Allen, will use the world's largest aircraft to hurl rockets into the sky, saving them fuel and increasing their payload capacity. This week, Stratolaunch lifted off, flying for 2.5 hours up to an altitude of 5,000 meters and reaching a maximum speed of 304 km/h. Take that Spruce Goose.
Other Interesting Space Stuff
I really love the composition of this Milky Way panorama captured by @sq_snaps from Australia. I've been to Australia just once, and the skies there are nothing short of stunning. As a Canadian, it was so strange to be able to look directly up and see the core features of the Milky Way. This photo really captures that experience.
We have featured nearly 1,000 astrophotographers on our Instagram page, which has more than 168,000 followers. Want to do a takeover? Use the hashtag #universetoday and I'll check out your photos.
Find your way across the night sky. Choose a variety of astronomy gear. Follow the Moon and the planets. Find deep sky objects across the seasons in both hemispheres. Observe comets, asteroids, satellites and space stations. Learn to do astrophotography.
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