Archaeologists unearth ancient nose jewelry, made from human bone, amid Maya ruins in Mexico

Claire Voon
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Carlos Varela Scherrer/INAH

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.

(CNN) — Archaeologists working in the ruins of Palenque, an ancient city in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, have found a centuries-old, intricately carved Mayan nose ornament made of human bone. The curved artefact, which measures just over 6 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide (or roughly 2.4 by 2 inches), offers insight into ancient funerary traditions; it is believed to have been worn by priests during ceremonies in which they embodied the Mayan deity K’awiil, also known as God K, who is associated with lightning, fertility and abundance.

It is also an important example of Mayan artistic sensibilities, Arnoldo González Cruz, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which conducted the excavations, said in a statement.

The ornament is made of a fragment of the distal tibia, a bone which helps to form the ankle joint, and features engravings that symbolize ceremonial communications with gods and ancestors. The central figure is a Mayan man, shown in profile wearing a headdress and a beaded necklace, and with the Mayan glyph for “darkness” on his arm. He is accompanied by a skull and carries a bundle that is a common icon in Maya funerary scenes, according to González Cruz.

INAH’s team found the object while conducting conservation work at the Palace of Palenque, an elaborate complex at the center of the pre-Hispanic city and National Park of Palenque, a Unesco World Heritage site. The bone was buried in what archaeologists believe was a ritual deposit, interred between 600CE and 850CE to commemorate the completion of a building. Placed with it were seeds, small animal bones, obsidian blades and large pieces of coal.

When worn, the ornament would have sat on the bridge of the nose, creating a continuous line from the forehead to the tip of the nose. González Cruz said this was likely an attempt to echo the elongated head of K’awiil, who was often portrayed as a personification of an ear of corn.

This is the first nose ornament of its kind that archaeologists have found in Palenque, although artistic depictions of figures wearing such pieces appear elsewhere at the site — carved onto the lid of the sarcophagus of the famed 7th-century Mayan king Kʼinich Janaab Pakal at his burial chamber at Palenque, for instance, and also appearing on an oval tablet depicting Pakal and his mother.

Read more stories from The Art Newspaper here.

NASA Wants a Giant Inflatable Bag to Collect and Throw Out Space Junk

Passant Rabie
Thu, August 31, 2023 

A capture bag that will be used to collect space junk in orbit.

A capture bag that will be used to collect space junk in orbit.

Picking up the trash in space could be as easy as stuffing pieces of defunct spacecraft into a giant bag, closing it up, and tossing the pesky space junk into an orbital recycling plant. At least that’s what space startup TransAstra hopes to do with its inflatable capture bag.

NASA recently awarded the California-based company a $850,000 early-stage contract to build its inflatable space junk bag and demonstrate its technology on the ground, SpaceNews reported.

“Repeated trips to pick up orbital debris and transport it to Earth’s atmosphere for disposal require significant propellant and time,” Nicole Shumaker, TransAstra vice president of strategic partnerships, is quoted in SpaceNews as saying. “Recycling stations in space resolve this problem and transform what was previously a liability into an asset that not only mitigates orbital debris but opens up new possibilities for in-space manufacturing and construction.”

Jeff Bezos and Amazon board sued in row over satellites to rival Elon Musk’s Starlink

Matthew Field

THE TELEGRAPH
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Bezos' Blue Origin, founded in 2000, ran its first private space tourism flight in 2021 - AFP

Amazon has been accused of ignoring a “glaring conflict of interest” when awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in rocket contracts to a company owned by Jeff Bezos.

A lawsuit filed by an Amazon shareholder accuses the e-commerce giant’s board of acting “in bad faith” after handing a contract to Mr Bezos’s rocket company, Blue Origin, after less than 40 minutes of discussion.

Amazon is planning to launch a vast network of more than 3,000 satellites that will provide internet access around the world.

As part of the plan, it must contract rocket companies to fire its satellites into space.

Amazon has already paid about $1.7bn to three companies, including $585m to Mr Bezos’s Blue Origin. Its other contracts are with France’s Arianespace and United Launch Alliance.

The Cleveland Bakers and Teamsters Pension Fund, which is bringing the lawsuit, said the rocket launch contract was the “second largest” in Amazon’s history, after its $13.7bn takeover of Whole Foods.

The legal claim alleges the company’s audit committee “inexplicably” did not consider awarding the contract to rival billionaire Elon Musk’s SpaceX, despite the rival company’s track record for successful rocket launches.

SpaceX was not among the options presented to board members, the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit argues the board had little role in negotiations. Instead, Mr Bezos and his team led the negotiations with a company he also owned, it is claimed.

The company’s audit committee “rubberstamped” the transaction in January 2022 when Mr Bezos was still chief executive of Amazon, the suit alleges. Two months later, the deal was approved by the board.

The entire Amazon board, including Mr Bezos, are defendants in the case.

The lawsuit adds that, beyond the potential conflict of interest, there was not enough scrutiny of “Blue Origin’s lack of reliability”. The claim states the company’s heavy lift rocket remains “firmly rooted to the ground”. Amazon has yet to launch a single satellite.

While Mr Bezos’s rocket company has launched half a dozen tourist flights to the edge of space, its current New Shepard rocket has not flown for over a year. The first launch of its larger New Glenn rocket is not planned until next year.

An Amazon spokesman said: “The claims in this lawsuit are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the legal process.”

NASA's Main Hotline to Space Is in Jeopardy Due to Increasing Demand

Passant Rabie
Fri, September 1, 2023 

The Deep Space Network is an international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions.

The Deep Space Network is an international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions.

In order to contact its interplanetary spacecraft, NASA relies on an array of giant radio antennas spread across different parts of the world. The trusty communications network has been transferring data back and forth for more than 60 years but its antennas are currently operating at capacity, with an anticipated growth in demand as the space agency prepares to launch crewed missions to the Moon.

A recent report by NASA’s Office of Inspector General revealed that the Deep Space Network (DSN) is in a dire state, with demand on its radio antennas exceeding supply by as much as 40% at times. This means that ongoing space missions are requesting more time than the network’s current capacity can provide. In the past five years, NASA missions received between 8,500 and 15,000 less DSN tracking hours than requested, according to the report.

Mission teams use DSN’s scheduling system to request network capacity to communicate with their spacecraft. “As capacity challenges grow and issues such as unforeseen outages occur, missions’ have expressed frustration with the process for scheduling and rescheduling DSN support,” the report read.

DSN uses radio frequency transmissions that travel through large antenna systems. The network is made up of three deep-space communications facilities located at Goldstone in California’s Mojave Desert, another near Madrid, Spain, and the third near Canberra, Australia. The locations are strategically placed approximately 120 degrees apart to ensure that at any point in time, one or more of these facilities can communicate with a spacecraft as the Earth rotates around its 360 degree axis.

In order to relieve some of the increasing demand on the network, NASA’s Office of Inspector General recommended that the space agency build new antennas and upgrade its existing infrastructure. NASA has been making efforts to upgrade DSN in order to meet new mission needs, including the installation of 18-meter antennas called LEGS dedicated to lunar missions, but its efforts have fallen behind on schedule and ran over budget. The space agency is currently looking into other options such as turning to foreign partners or utilizing commercial communication systems.

“As NASA pivots toward extended human exploration of the Moon, the agency may need to give DSN capacity to priority missions in critical phases, such as launches, while other missions make do with limited or no data during those periods,” the report stated.

How India landed on the moon and flew to Mars at a fraction of the cost of NASA and Russia missions

Morgan McFall-Johnsen,Maiya Focht
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Getting to the moon is expensive, but India managed to do it on a budget.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University; Insider

India is the first to ever land near the moon's south pole and it succeeded without breaking the bank.


The Chandrayaan-3 moon mission cost far less than Russia's moon mission or NASA's planned rover.


India may have kept the price tag low by building a small lander and taking the moon one step at a time.

India's first moon landing, which touched down near the lunar south pole on August 23, was both historic and budget-friendly.

At about $74 million, India's moon mission was less than half the cost of Russia's south-pole lander ($200 million), which misfired its engines and crashed on August 20, as well as the estimated budget of NASA's planned VIPER rover to the lunar south pole ($433.5 million).

The Indian mission, called Chandrayaan-3, which is the first spacecraft to ever touch down near the moon's south pole, was also cheaper than the Hollywood space blockbusters "Gravity" ($100 million), "The Martian" ($108 million), and "Interstellar" ($165 million).

A still from a livestream shows a 3D reconstitution of India's historic moon landing. India has become the first nation to land a robotic mission to the crucial south pole of the moon.ISRO

"Good for India," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote, commenting on the mission's low price tag in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

Asked how they managed to keep costs so low, S. Somanath, the director of the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), told reporters with a laugh: "I won't disclose such secrets. We don't want everyone else to become so cost-effective," according to the New York Times.

S. Somanath addresses the media after the successful landing of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the moon, in Bengaluru, India.Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo

Unlike NASA, which is required to publish detailed budget proposals, India has shared very little information about its budgeting. So, it's unclear what went into the $74 million cost estimate.

That's also a conversion from Indian currency, rupees, so the comparison isn't apples to apples.

Still, the small price tag can be partially explained by the small size and scope of the mission, and the fact that it was a redo of an earlier flight.

Small spacecraft, small costs

Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3, the word for "moon craft" in Sanskrit, travels after it was launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo

India's main strategy for being frugal on the moon seems to be that it kept the spacecraft small.

Weighing in at just 1,752 kilograms, according to ISRO, Chandrayaan-3 was likely relatively cheap to launch.

"Small landers imply smaller launch vehicles, smaller components, less materials," Robert Braun, head of space exploration at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told Insider. "If the scope of the mission is small, then the cost is likely to be small."

That's a lesson that ISRO first learned in 2014, when they became the first country to successfully insert a spacecraft in Mars orbit on the first try.

By keeping the payload light, adapting technologies ISRO had used before, and keeping workers' salaries lean, Wired reported, the agency managed to keep the receipt for the Mars mission to $74 million. (Same as Chandrayaan-3. Weird coincidence!)

ISRO gets India's Mars craft ready for launch.Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images

This is markedly different from how NASA's Mars orbiter, MAVEN, operated.

India "kept it small," Andrew Coates, a physics professor who has worked on European and NASA Mars missions, told the BBC in 2014. "The payload weighs only about 15 kg. Compare that with the complexity in the payload in MAVEN and that will explain a lot about the cost."

The proof of concept may lie in comparing the programs' receipts. The MAVEN mission cost NASA $582.5 million, according to the Planetary Society.

But Chandrayaan-3 was actually heavier than Russia's failed mission, called Luna-25, which weighed about 1,237 kg by the time it reached lunar orbit, according to Anatoly Zak, an English-language reporter covering Russia's space programs.

That's where India's other strategy may come in to beat out Russia's price tag.
Start small and build step by step, to the moon and beyond

The Earth captured by the Appllo 11 mission from the moon.NASA/JSC

This wasn't India's first attempt to land near the moon's south pole. A previous mission, Chandrayaan-2, crashed there in 2019.

The costs of research, development, and testing that went into that first attempt may not be included in the cost of Chandrayaan-3.

"They've approached their lunar program as a series of missions," Braun said. "That is a way of managing cost."

India's moon program began with Chandrayaan-1, which sent a spacecraft into lunar orbit and dropped a hard-impact probe to intentionally crash into the lunar surface.

That's a much easier and cheaper mission to start building new capabilities, then build up to a soft landing and a small rover.

NASA has taken a similar approach to Mars, and it has "worked very well," Braun said.

Compare that to Russia's Luna-25 mission. It was the country's first mission to the moon since the 1970s and the fall of the Soviet Union. It aimed to make a soft landing on the south pole of the moon, where nobody had succeeded yet.

"They went with a pretty hard mission, right out of the gate," Braun said, adding, "I think an incremental approach actually is a great way to pursue space exploration. One step at a time."

India's adorable, dog-sized moon rover did its first science on the moon by shooting powerful laser beams at the surface

Sonam Sheth,Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Updated Fri, September 1, 2023 


India becomes the first country to land on the moon's south pole

The Pragyaan rover will be the first robot to drive around near the lunar south pole. What will it find?Indian Space Research Organization

India's moon rover made its first scientific observation near the lunar south pole.


The 57-pound rover is called Pragyaan — a Hindu name meaning one who possesses wisdom.


Pragyaan has confirmed the presence of sulfur as well as detected other elements.

India made history by becoming the first country to land successfully near the lunar south pole. And its lunar rover wasted no time in rolling out to make its first scientific observations.

On Tuesday, the Indian Space Research Organization announced on its website that the moon rover had confirmed the presence of sulphur. And preliminary analyses also suggest the presence of aluminum, calcium, iron, chromium, and titanium.

Suffice it to say, the rover's been busy. This adorable rover is called Pragyaan — a Hindu name meaning one who possesses greater knowledge and wisdom.

Pragyaan weighs 57 pounds, about the size of a small German shepherd or bull terrier, and it's spending two weeks driving where no robot or human has been before.

Pragyaan's science could be critical for learning how to mine moon water — a goal every moon-minded nation is eyeing.

The rover may be small and cute, but India's new moon mission "definitely puts them on the international stage as an emerging space power," Robert Braun, head of space exploration at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told Insider.
What will India's moon rover do next?

It's equipped with a laser and an alpha-particle beam to help it study the composition of the lunar south pole region, which is of particular interest.

The Vikram lander is the first robot to successfully land near the lunar south pole. Inside, it carried the Pragyaan lunar rover, which rolls out and down to the ground on the ramp shown here.Indian Space Research Organisation

The lunar south pole is thought to be the most water-rich region on the moon. That's critical since water ice could be mined to produce breathable oxygen for future crewed lunar bases, as well as hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel that could propel future missions to Mars and beyond.

The rover will also use its RAMBHA and ILSA payloads on board to study the lunar atmosphere as well as dig up samples for additional analysis of the surface's composition, per Times of India.

But it was the rover's Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) instrument that ultimately made the first-ever measurements of the lunar south pole region's composition, ISRO reported. The laser fires intense pulses at the lunar surface, which generates an extremely hot plasma.

That's where a trick of physics comes in handy: Each element on the periodic table emits a unique set of wavelengths of light. Scientists can study the light from the plasma to identify those wavelength sets and determine the chemical make-up of the stuff on the moon.
A moment for the history books

India is the fourth country — after Russia, the US, and China — to land on the moon.

"It's a huge achievement for the whole nation," Braun said. "Last time they got to the playoffs, if you will, and this time they won the Super Bowl."

"Everyone in the space community is joining with the nation of India, and their talented engineers and scientists, and celebrating their success and this achievement," he added.

India wants to fly its own astronauts to the moon, after becoming the first nation to land near the lunar south pole

Marianne Guenot,Morgan McFall-Johnsen
Fri, September 1, 2023 


A still from a livestream shows a 3D reconstitution of India's historic moon landing.ISRO

India plans to build on its historic lunar landing by sending people to the moon.


India landed its first lunar spacecraft, and the first robotic mission near the moon's south pole.


India will "look into a human flight mission as well in the future," said Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi confirmed India's intention to send people to the moon in the near future as the nation celebrated the successful landing of the world's first-ever robotic mission to the lunar south pole region.

India's Chandrayaan-3 probe defeated all odds on August 23 after it managed to successfully land near the south pole of the moon, beating competing nations to the strategically important site.

With the landing, India has become the fourth nation — after Russia, the US, and China — to land on the moon.

"It definitely puts them on the international stage as an emerging space power," Robert Braun, head of space exploration at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, told Insider.

The nation will build on this mission success by launching its first crewed mission to the moon, Modi said in Hindi during a livestream of the landing, Sky News reported.

Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) staff watch Prime Minister Narendra Modi speak after the landing of spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 on the moon.Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo

"India is now on the moon," said Modi, per the BBC.

The nation "will look into a human flight mission as well for the future," he said, per Sky News.
Indian astronauts to Earth's orbit and beyond

Astronaut Rakesh Sharma, the only Indian national to have flown into space, poses behind an Indian astronaut uniform.Pallava Bagla/Corbis via Getty Images

India has previously said it will attempt a crewed mission to low-Earth orbit by late 2024, the Times of India reported.

"India is showing and proving that the sky is not the limit," said Modi per Sky News.

Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-3 launches from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India.Aijaz Rahi/AP Photo

Per the Indian Space Research Organisation, India plans to first launch two uncrewed missions, Gaganyaan 1 and 2, the first of which is planned by the end of this year. The missions should test the capacity of the nation's rocket, LVM3.

This should be followed by the nation's first crewed mission, which will aim to send three astronauts to low-Earth orbit for a three-day mission.
India nailed a difficult feat amid multiple moon crashes

The lunar south pole region on the far side of the moon, captured by Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft, before its failed attempt to land.Centre for Operation of Space Ground-Based Infrastructure-Roscosmos State Space Corporation via AP

The Chandrayaan-3 mission, which successfully landed the Vikram lander near the south pole of the moon, cemented India's position as a frontrunner in the race to the moon.

The south polar region is strategically important because scientists believe water ice is present in the area. The hope is this water could someday support humans living on the moon and help manufacture fuel for rockets launching from the moon to Mars.

Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, tried to land its own robotic mission near the south pole of the moon, but on August 20 it misfired its engines and crashed.

Both Japanese private company ispace and Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL have also crashed on the moon in recent years.

India's first attempt at the lunar south pole region in 2019, called Chandrayaan-2, crashed as well. Clearly the Indian space agency learned a lot from that failed landing.

"Last time they got to the playoffs, if you will, and this time they won the Super Bowl," Braun said.

Amazing satellite video shows China's space station come together in Earth orbit 

Andrew Jones
Fri, September 1, 2023

3D illustration of Tiangong, the Chinese space station, orbiting Earth, with Earth in the background.

An Australian company has released images showing how China constructed its Tiangong space station.

HEO Robotics specializes in non-Earth imaging, meaning using space-based sensors to acquire images of objects of interest in orbit such as satellites. The firm released images demonstrating some of these capabilities on Aug. 30, showing step-by-step moves made by China to complete its three-module Tiangong space station.

"Using our non-Earth imaging capability, we witnessed a story unfold over an 18-month timeframe. Each stage you see was verified with a photo taken from another satellite in space," the company posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Related: See latest configuration of China's Tiangong space station in stunning new video

The short video shows the space station's Tianhe core module first being visited by Tianzhou cargo vessels and crewed Shenzhou spacecraft, before two experiment modules, Wentian and Mengtian, are added to the complex and transpositioned to form a "T-shape" and receiving new visitors.

Related Stories:

— China launches 3 astronauts to Tiangong space station on Shenzhou 16 spacecraft (video)

— China's space program: Latest news and photos

— China's Shenzhou 15 capsule lands safely with 3 Tiangong space station astronauts (video)

HEO Robotics says its services help "defense, governments and commercial operators visually monitor space objects with our in-orbit flyby inspection technology," according to the company's webpages. The Sydney-based startup recently saw its Holmes Imager reach orbit as a hosted payload aboard Turion's Droid-1, and raised $12 million AUD in investment to expand its software platform.

Tiangong is currently inhabited by the three-person Shenzhou 17 crew. China aims to keep the orbital outpost occupied for at least a decade and potentially utilize the station for commercial purposes.

Scientists Say They've Found the Largest Asteroid Impact Crater Hiding in Plain Sight

Tim Newcomb
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Largest-Ever Asteroid Impact Might be in Australia

Michael Godek - Getty Images


Researchers believe they’ve discovered the world’s largest asteroid impact crater in New South Wales, Australia.


They think the impact may have happened between 445 and 443 million years ago.


It could have been part of the reason for the Hirnantian glaciation stage, a mass extinction event that eliminated about 85 percent of Earth’s species.

The news about the discovery of the world’s largest asteroid impact crater is huge, if true—323-miles-in-diameter huge.

Researchers at University New South Wales (UNSW) believe they’ve found evidence that an asteroid impact buried near the town of Deniliquin, Australia, is the world’s largest ever discovered, and could have helped trigger a major glaciation event that killed off 85 percent of the world’s species. The research is published in the journal Tectonophysics.

Dubbed the Deniliquin structure, UNSW adjunct professor and asteroid impact researcher Andrew Glikson believes the crater is 323 miles in diameter, nearly double the size of the current record-holding crater—the Vredefortimpact structure in South Africa.

Glikson claims the impact that caused the crater may have occurred during the Late Ordovician mass extinction event. “Specifically, I think it may have triggered what’s called the Hirnantian glaciation stage, which lasted between 445.2 and 433.8 million years ago,” he wrote in a statement. “This huge glaciation and mass extinction event eliminated about 85 percent of the planet’s species.”

Gigantic asteroid impacts can have a devastating effect for life on Earth, with the sudden impact not only sending reverberating waves of devastation out, but the debris fields and subsequent atmospheric noise dims the sun’s intensity and can trigger a cooling event.

Glikson concedes that the crater may be even older, but says that whenever the asteroid hit, it hit the eastern part of the Gondwana continent—which existed for some time before it split off into several continents, including Australia.

Finding a crater of that size buried in plain view is tricky because of erosion and sediment movement. Even Earth’s shifting tectonic plates can alter the crater. Glikson says that when an asteroid strikes, it creates a crater with an uplifted core, like how a drop of water splashes upward when a pebble hits a pool.

“This central uplifted dome is a key characteristic of large impact structures,” he writes. “However, it can erode over thousands to millions of years, making the structure difficult to identify.”

By understanding the geophysical makeup of the materials thrown out of a crater during impact, scientists can study layers of “impact ejecta” in various terrains around the world. Already, Gondwana and Australia were and are home to 38 confirmed and 43 potential impact structures.

In 1995, Glikson’s colleague Tony Yeates suggested thst magnetic patterns in New South Wales likely represented a massive—yet buried—impact structure. By analyzing the region’s updated geophysical data between 2015 and 2020, Glikson wrote, he believes he “confirmed the existence” of the Deniliquin structure with a seismically defined dome at the center.

To support his claim, Glikson cites a number of indicative physical phenomena. Magnetic readings that reveal a symmetrical rippling pattern that would have been produced by the impact’s extremely high temperatures, a central low magnetic zone corresponding to deep deformation above the mantle dome (the top of the dome is shallower than the top of the regional mantle), and radial faults moving away from the believed center that are typical of large impact structures are among the indicators.

According to the study, the central uplift and associated angular rock have all been eroded. Still, the authors claim that an interpretation of the Deniliquin features are “inconsistent” with the surrounding structural trends.

“The bulk of the evidence for the Deniliquin impact is based on geophysical data obtained from the surface,” Glikson wrote. “For proof of impact, we’ll need to collect physical evidence of shock, which can only come from drilling deep into the structure.”

With no mega-drilling operation planned, we’ll have to chalk up the Deniliquin news to the giant possibility of an enormous asteroid impact crater with vast consequences. Huge, if true, indeed.

Newly Spotted Comet May Soon Be Visible Without Telescopes
George Dvorsky
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Comet Nishimura as seen from Spain.

A comet recently discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura is garnering attention from NASA and skywatchers alike.

Using a standard digital camera, Nishimura detected the celestial body on August 11 during a series of 30-second exposures, according to NASA. Though currently not visible to the naked eye, this status may soon change. NASA has noted the comet’s steady increase in brightness since its discovery. Furthermore, astronomers have now charted the comet’s future trajectory through the inner solar system.

A significant event for the comet is on the horizon; its perihelion, or the point of closest approach to the Sun, is predicted for September 17. At this juncture, it will be approximately 0.22 AU (astronomical units) from the Sun, a distance just over one-fifth of the gap between Earth and the Sun, as noted by Cosmos Magazine. It takes an estimated 435 years for Nishimura to complete a single orbit around the Sun, making this a long-period comet.

As the comet is expected to pass closer to the Sun than Mercury—the innermost planet of our solar system—it’s entirely possible that the comet’s nucleus could disintegrate as a result of the intense solar heat. Keep that in mind should you be fortunate enough to gaze upon Nishimura in the coming days.

 Gizmodo

James Webb telescope reveals the universe may have far fewer active black holes than we thought

Briley Lewis
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Illustration of active galactic nucleus.


Every galaxy, including our own Milky Way, has a monster lurking in its heart — a supermassive black hole. Despite how common these gargantuan objects are, astronomers are still trying to figure out how the universe's supermassive black holes were born, and how they grew to their humongous sizes.

Now, new observations from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have revealed a key insight into the growing pains of supermassive black holes, also known as SMBHs: there are actually fewer rapidly growing black holes than previously predicted. This work was recently submitted to the Astrophysical Journal and made available to read before peer review on the preprint database arXiv.

Teenage SMBHs grow rapidly, eating up material around them, and appear to us as a bright blob known as an active galactic nucleus (AGN). Astronomers generally agree our galaxy's SMBH has long since quieted, leaving its active years in its past. Most of the monsters' growth spurts actually happened around 7 to 11 billion years ago.

Related: A black hole 'assassin' ripped a star to shreds and left its guts strewn about the galaxy

In their new research, the study authors used the ultra-powerful JWST to hunt for more active black holes in the midst of their prime growth years, surveying a patch of sky for distant galaxies with unprecedented sensitivity. They observed around 400 galaxies that are billions of light-years away, meaning we're seeing them as they were billions of years ago — right during their galactic growth spurts.

MIRI Pointing 1 (right panel) alongside the Spizter/IRAC (middle) and MIPS (left) observations of the same region.

"Until now, we were only able to see the most actively growing and biggest supermassive black holes," lead study author Allison Kirkpatrick, an astronomer at the University of Kansas, told Live Science. "It would be like aliens trying to piece together what the average human can do but only studying Olympic athletes. Now, with JWST, we have our first look at the population of ‘normal’ galaxies in the distant past."

Astronomers previously thought that even "average"-sized black holes like the one in the Milky Way would show signs of their rapid growth, since the large AGN observed previously were clearly growing up fast. Even with the massive increase in sensitivity from JWST's instruments to peer down to smaller galaxies, though, they couldn't find more really active teenage AGN. In fact, the population of active black holes was far fewer than previous estimates have suggested.

Installation of MIRI into the instrument module of the James Webb Space Telescope.

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By looking at these average galaxies, astronomers even gleaned insight into our Milky Way's past. "If most galaxies, like ours, lack detectable AGN, it could imply that our black hole was never more active in the past," Kirkpatrick said in a statement.

The team's next steps are to look at even more galaxies; after all, 400 galaxies out of billions in the universe is only a drop in the bucket. With her next survey, Kirkpatrick plans to observe thousands of galaxies instead of hundreds, hopefully clearing up the picture of how smaller galaxies get their black holes, and evolve into something like the galaxy we know and live in today.

Star-studded stellar nursery shines in new Hubble Telescope photo

Samantha Mathewson
Fri, September 1, 2023

Hundreds of bright blue stars sparkle against the dark background regions of dust clouds, from which new stars are born, including the massive protostar OH 339.88-1.26, which lurks at the center of this image, behind the dark vertical streak.

The Hubble Space Telescope has photographed a bright stellar nursery studded with dazzling infant stars.

Taken using Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 instrument, the image captures a massive protostar called OH 339.88-1.26 lurking behind star-forming clouds of dust and gas. OH 339.88-1.26 lies an estimated 8,900 light-years from Earth in the constellation Ara.

During the protostellar phase, stars are still in the process of gathering mass from their parent molecular clouds. Despite its young age, OH 339.88-1.26 is estimated to be about 20 times the mass of the sun, according to a statement from the European Space Agency (ESA). (Hubble is a joint mission of NASA and ESA.)

Related: The best Hubble Space Telescope images of all time!

"Winding lanes of dark dust thread through this image, which is also studded with bright stars crowned with criss-crossing diffraction spikes," ESA officials said in the statement. "The dark vertical streak at the center of this image hides OH 339.88-1.26, which is an astrophysical maser."

A maser (short for "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation") is a naturally occurring source of stimulated spectral line emission, or laser, that produces coherent light at microwave wavelengths. This type of emission has been observed in molecular clouds, comets, planetary atmospheres like that at the north pole of Jupiter and stellar atmospheres, ESA officials said.

The recent views of OH 339.88-1.26 were collected as part of an initiative to study the hearts of regions where massive stars are born to better understand the nature and formation of protostars like OH 339.88-1.26.

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Observations to support Hubble's findings were also taken using the ground-based Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile and the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which previously operated out of a converted 747 aircraft. ALMA comprises 66 high-precision antennas, spread over distances of up to 10 miles (16 kilometers), making it the largest currently operational ground-based astronomical project, according to the ESA statement.

OH 339.88-1.26, cloaked by dark dust at the center of the image, is surrounded by hundreds of stars whose bright light causes diffraction spikes from reflecting off Hubble's mirrors. The recent image of OH 339.88-1.26 was released online on Monday (Aug. 28).