Jupiter Double Shadow Transit - 8/16/18 By WardAgainstNewbs

Milky Way Falls

It can be the driest place on planet Earth, but water still flows in Chile’s Atacama desert, high in the mountains. After discovering this small creek with running water, the photographer returned to the site to watch the Milky Way rise in the dark southern skies, calculating the moment when Milky Way and precious flowing water would meet. In the panoramic night skyscape, stars and nebulae immersed in the glow along the Milky Way itself also shared that moment with the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies the Large and Small Magellanic clouds above the horizon at the right. Bright star Beta Centauri is poised at the very top of the waterfall. Above it lies the dark expanse of the Coalsack nebula and the stars of the Southern Cross. Credit: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

Mars, God of War

Scary Space Stories to Tell in the Dark

The universe is full of dazzling sights, but there’s an eerie side of space, too. Nestled between the stars, shadowy figures lurk unseen. The entire galaxy could even be considered a graveyard, full of long-dead stars. And it’s not just the Milky Way – the whole universe is a bit like one giant haunted house! Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will illuminate all kinds of spine-chilling cosmic mysteries when it launches in 2027, but for now settle in for some true, scary space stories.

Flickering Lights

One of the first signs that things are about to get creepy in a scary movie is when the lights start to flicker. That happens all the time in space, too! But instead of being a sinister omen, it can help us find planets circling other stars.

Roman will stare toward the heart of our galaxy and watch to see when pairs of stars appear to align in the sky. When that happens, the nearer star – and orbiting planets – can lens light from the farther star, creating a brief brightening. That’s because every massive object warps the fabric of space-time, changing the path light takes when it passes close by. Roman could find around 1,000 planets using this technique, which is called microlensing.

The mission will also see little flickers when planets cross in front of their host star as they orbit and temporarily dim the light we receive from the star. Roman could find an additional 100,000 planets this way!

Galactic Ghosts

Roman is going to be one of the best ghost hunters in the galaxy! Since microlensing relies on an object’s gravity, not its light, it can find all kinds of invisible specters drifting through the Milky Way. That includes rogue planets, which roam the galaxy alone instead of orbiting a star…

…and solo stellar-mass black holes, which we can usually only find when they have a visible companion, like a star. Astronomers think there should be 100 million of these black holes in our galaxy.

Stellar Skeletons

Black holes aren’t the only dead stars hiding in the sky. When stars that aren’t quite massive enough to form black holes run out of fuel, they blast away their outer layers and become neutron stars. These stellar cores are the densest material we can directly observe. One sugar cube of neutron star material would weigh about 1 billion tons (or 1 trillion kilograms) on Earth! Roman will be able to detect when these extreme objects collide.

Smaller stars like our Sun have less dramatic fates. After they run out of fuel, they swell up and shrug off their outer layers until only a small, hot core called a white dwarf remains. Those outer layers may be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. Roman will explore regions where new stars are bursting to life, possibly containing the remnants of such dead stars.

Cosmic Cobwebs

If we zoom out far enough, the structure of space looks like a giant cobweb! The cosmic web is the large-scale backbone of the universe, made up mainly of a mysterious substance known as dark matter and laced with gas, upon which galaxies are built. Roman will find precise distances for more than 10 million galaxies to map the structure of the cosmos, helping astronomers figure out why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.

Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

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A comforting thought

Five thousand years ago, the Sumerians called the night ngi, the stars mul, and the moon Nanna.

Four thousand years ago, the Akkadians called the night mūšu, the stars kakkabū, and the moon Sîn.

Three thousand years ago, the Hittites called the night išpanza, the stars haštereš, and the moon Arma.

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks called the night nux, the stars astra, and the moon Selênê.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans called the night nox, the stars stellae, and the moon Luna.

Kings and queens and heroes looked up at them. So did travelers coming home, and little children who sneaked out of bed. So did slaves, and mothers and soldiers and old shepherds, and Sappho and Muršili and Enheduanna and Socrates and Hatshepsut and Cyrus and Cicero. In this darkness it didn’t matter who they were, or where they stood. Only that they were human.

Think of that tonight, when you close your window. You are not alone. You share this night sky with centuries of dreamers and stargazers, and people who longed for quiet. Are you anxious? The Hittites were too: they called it pittuliyaš. Does your heart ache? The Greeks felt it too: they called it akhos. Those who look up to the stars for comfort are a family, and you belong to them. Your ancestors have stood under Nanna, Sîn, Arma, Selênê and Luna for five thousand years. Now its light is yours.

May it soothe you well.

A sea of stars

Little Ghost Nebula

𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝟏,𝟑𝟐𝟎 𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭-𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐥 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭, 𝐓𝐎𝐈-𝟏𝟑𝟑𝟖 𝐛. 𝐀 𝐍𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞-𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐞𝐱𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝟔.𝟗 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐢𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐡. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐟 𝐂𝐮𝐤𝐢𝐞𝐫, 𝐚 𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐡 𝐬𝐜𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐥 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭, 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐝𝐝𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐒𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐅𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐂𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐬 𝐚 𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧. 💫💗✨

Good Night Moon

“Is Anyone Out There?” Self-portrait by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean, 2000.

Toothbrush Cluster RX J0603.3+4214