The Astronomy Thread

Kharzette

Kharzette

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I watched the roman telescope launch. Anyone notice that one of the boosters didn't land on the pad? Or maybe the camera just froze or something.

They said both landed ok so was just wondering if it was just off camera and landed in the grass or something.
 
Kajiimagi

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Kharzette said:
I watched the roman telescope launch. Anyone notice that one of the boosters didn't land on the pad? Or maybe the camera just froze or something.

They said both landed ok so was just wondering if it was just off camera and landed in the grass or something.
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Damn it I forgot it was launching!
 
MrHolland420

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Kharzette said:
I watched the roman telescope launch. Anyone notice that one of the boosters didn't land on the pad? Or maybe the camera just froze or something.

They said both landed ok so was just wondering if it was just off camera and landed in the grass or something.
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I watched it yesterday, and both of the side boosters landed safely on their pads.....
 
Cybsled

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Because they are banking on Starship. I can almost guarantee that if for whatever reason, Starship is not rated for human flight by the time 2030 rolls around or the ISS is still flying, SpaceX won't retire Crew Dragon unless NASA decides to stop funding trips.
 
Kajiimagi

Kajiimagi

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Cybsled said:
Because they are banking on Starship. I can almost guarantee that if for whatever reason, Starship is not rated for human flight by the time 2030 rolls around or the ISS is still flying, SpaceX won't retire Crew Dragon unless NASA decides to stop funding trips.
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Last thing I read was the ISS was supposed to come down in 2030 but of course the NASA path changes hour by hour.
 
meStevo

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Unfocused first light from Roman.

science.nasa.gov

NASA Activates Roman’s Primary Instrument, Checks Out Coronagraph - NASA Science

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope team has successfully activated the Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will allow scientists
science.nasa.gov science.nasa.gov


1789757287824.png
 
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meStevo

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Precursors of primordial soup found on Mars.


Among the newly identified molecules is a nitrogen heterocycle, a ring of carbon atoms that includes nitrogen. This kind of molecular structure is considered a predecessor to RNA and DNA, two nucleic acids that are key to genetic information.​
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“That detection is pretty profound because these structures can be chemical precursors to more complex nitrogen-bearing molecules,” said the paper’s lead author, Amy Williams of the University of Florida in Gainesville. “Nitrogen heterorcycles have never been found before on the Martian surface or confirmed in Martian meteorites.”​
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Another exciting discovery was benzothiophene, a carbon- and sulfur-bearing molecule that’s been found in many meteorites. These meteorites, along with the organic molecules within them, are thought by some scientists to have seeded prebiotic chemistry across the early solar system.​
 
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meStevo

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Algo fed me this on youtube, had me going and looking for the source material because I'm not sure I'd ever read about it.



science.nasa.gov

Hubble Sees Possible Runaway Black Hole Creating a Trail of Stars - NASA Science

There's an invisible monster on the loose, barreling through intergalactic space so fast that if it were in our solar system, it could travel from Earth to
science.nasa.gov science.nasa.gov

Asked Muse for the latest:

This is RBH-1, and the latest chapter is actually a JWST confirmation, with a dispute still running alongside it.​
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The headline numbers are the same ones from the original Hubble find: a black hole weighing as much as 20 million Suns, leaving a 200,000-light-year-long trail of newborn stars, twice the diameter of the Milky Way.​
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What is new is the follow-up. The JWST confirmation paper was submitted in December 2025 and revised in January 2026. Using JWST/NIRSpec data from July 2024, van Dokkum's team found a sharp 600 km/s velocity jump across just 1 kiloparsec at the tip of the streak, which they interpret as a supersonic bow shock. That gives a black hole speed of about 954 km/s and a mass of at least 10 million Suns, and they conclude the wake is powered by a supersonic runaway supermassive black hole.​
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A separate 2026 modelling study then worked backward from that speed and trajectory, and found the kick fits a merger where one black hole was spinning rapidly and about six times more massive than the other, merging roughly 70 million years ago. The catch is that a large enough recoil like this may happen in fewer than 10 percent of black hole mergers.​
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One honest caveat: not everyone accepts the confirmation. A February 2026 paper by the rival team argues the same JWST spectra are still consistent with the edge-on, bulgeless galaxy explanation, and they point to things like the star mass to rotation speed relationship fitting a normal disk galaxy. So the fair status is "confirmed by the discovery team, still contested by others," not settled by the whole field.​
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Here is the original NASA Hubble image of the streak. The black hole sits at the tip, with the star trail stretching back toward its parent galaxy.​

1793337746552.png


JWST Confirmation of a Runaway Supermassive Black Hole via its Supersonic Bow Shock

We present JWST/NIRSpec IFU observations of a candidate runaway supermassive black hole at the tip of a 62 kpc-long linear feature at z=0.96. The JWST data show a sharp kinematic discontinuity at the tip, with a radial velocity change of $\approx 600$ km/s across 0.1'' (1 kpc). The velocity...
arxiv.org arxiv.org
 
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Tholan

Tholan

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We had Superintelligence (I dont want any problems with US) making breakthrough discoveries in math and physics, I can't wait to get some good stuff in astrophysics.
 
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