Explore Astronomy

Researchers are testing the ways living beings would react to a Martian trip.

A Russian institute is selecting macaques that may eventually fly to Mars before humans do. Twelve monkeys have flown in Russian and Soviet spaceflights, some for around two weeks. The monkey experiment is happening at same time as one simulating conditions of interplanetary flight for humans here on the ground.

• Universe Today on the monkey experiment.
• BBC news reports on the monkey tests.

A third red spot has appeared on the surface of Jupiter, heralding the creation of a new, violent storm. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is a storm that’s been whirling away through the planet’s atmosphere for perhaps hundreds of years. These new storms may indicate changing weather on the gas giant. A white dwarf star is missing from the center of the nebula that should house it, according to a Hubble scientist working with a team on ground-based telescopes.

• New Red Spot Appears on Jupiter
• White Dwarf Lost in Planetary Nebula

The MARTE project uses this drill to search for underground microbes.

Could microbes have developed and survived in the frigid below-ground region of Mars or other solar system bodies? New results from a team developing drilling and sampling of subsurface soil in Spain found a startling result. Very tough microbes can indeed survive underneath the ground if the conditions are right, and the Mars Astrobiology Research and Technology Experiment (MARTE) team may have found the right environment.

• The MARTE project page.
• Space.com on the MARTE microbes.

The explosion's glare was still present weeks after the event.

NASA’s SWIFT telescope monitors the sky for emission from powerful outbursts. On March 19, 2008, it glimpsed an explosion so bright it could be seen with the naked eye for 30 seconds despite being 7.5 billion light years away — the farthest object ever seen with human eyes. It was a gamma ray burst, one of the incredible explosions credited to the explosions of tremendously massive stars.

• HubbleSite news release on the gamma ray burst.
• NASA SWIFT mission release on the gamma ray burst.
• NASA's SWIFT page.

And you think losing your car keys is a pain. Scientists have known since the 1960s that about half of the ordinary matter is missing from the universe. Now they’ve found some of it in an unusual location. A rare black hole may be nestled in the center of a cluster of stars. And astronomers are recalculating the Hubble Constant — the rate at which the universe is expanding.

• Hubble Survey Finds Missing Matter, Probes Intergalactic Web
• Astronomers Find Suspected Medium-Size Black Hole in Omega Centauri

The new discovery was made by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

New radar observations from NASA’s latest mission to Mars indicate that the red planet’s crust and upper mantle are stiffer and colder than previously thought, which suggests any liquid water existing below surface and any organisms living in that water would have to exist deeper than suspected.

• NASA release on the discovery.
• BBC news reports on the new observations.
• Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter page.

The Stereo mission uses dual spacecraft to study the Sun.

The first footage of a solar “tsunami” has been captured by NASA’s Stereo spacecraft. This tsunami, obviously, has nothing to do with water — it’s a wave of pressure traveling extremely fast across the surface of the Sun. The shock wave hurtled through Sun’s atmosphere at more than 620,000 mph.

• Space.com on the solar tsunami.
• NASA's Stereo mission page.
• John Hopkins University's Stereo mission page.
• Goddard Space Flight Center's Stereo mission page.
• A video of the solar tsunami.

This giant cloud of gas, known as the Smith Cloud, is headed for the Milky Way. Credit: NRAO

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way galaxy. When it hits, it may set off spectacular display of stellar fireworks in a tremendous burst of star formation. But not to worry, it will be 20-40 million years before its core smashes into our galaxy.

• National Radio Astronomy Observatory news release.
• New Scientist Space on the collision.
• Astronomy magazine discusses the collision.