Latest news with #NOIRLab
New York Post
2 days ago
- Science
- New York Post
‘City-killer' asteroid hurtling toward moon — this is the terrifying way it could wreak havoc on Earth
Our world could still be rocked indirectly. 'City-killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 may no longer be on a collision course with Earth, but it could pose a threat to our planet. Astronomers have upped the odds that the cosmic boulder will crash into the moon, which could potentially cause a cloud of shrapnel to impact Earth-orbiting satellites and other spacecraft, according to a scary new study submitted to the American Astronomy Society Journals. 'We were a little bit surprised at the possibility of there being a substantial amount of material [aimed] at the Earth,' Dr. Paul Wiegert, an astronomy professor at the University of Western Ontario who helmed the research, told the New Scientist. 3 Still from an animation showing asteroid 2024 YR4 as it passes by Earth and heads toward its potential impact with the Moon. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor / SWNS Wiegart illustrated these potential outcomes in a series of scary video simulations showing the potential fallout from a lunar crash-landing. First discovered on December 27 of last year, YR4 sparked worldwide concern that it could strike our planet on December 23, 2032, potentially generating enough power to destroy an entire city. At its peak on February 19, YR4 had an impact risk factor of 3.1%, making it one of the most dangerous asteroids on record. And while follow-up observations revealed that YR4 wouldn't hit home, the odds of it striking the Moon recently jumped from 3.8% to 4.3%, according to data by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) by NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies. 3 'We were a little bit surprised at the possibility of there being a substantial amount of material [aimed] at the Earth,' said Dr. Paul Wiegert. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor / SWNS Wiegert estimated that the asteroid would hit the Moon at 29,000 mph, creating a blast crater 0.6 miles wide, making it the largest lunar impact in the last 5,000 years. If it strikes just right, our planet's gravity would funnel up to 10% of the resultant debris toward our planet, per the simulations. 'Intuitively, the Earth is actually quite a small target when seen from the moon, and so your intuition is that not very much material would actually hit the Earth, but it turns out that the Earth's gravity can focus that material under certain conditions,' warned Wiegert. This debris field wouldn't threaten the planet itself, but could still have dire consequences for satellites in low orbit. By simulating the shrapnel cloud's potential trajectory 10,000 times, the team discovered that the satellites could sustain a decade's worth of damage in just a few days. 3 Artist's impression of the James Webb Telescope. NASA / SWNS While this barrage might not be enough to take out the satellites entirely, even impacts from small debris particles could potentially impact their functionality. 'If they were to hit a bit of a spacecraft that was a coolant pipe, or a sensor on the spacecraft exposed to space, or an antenna, then suddenly you get a loss of that particular functionality,' warned Mark Burchell, a space science lecturer at the University of Kent, UK 'You can't go and fix a satellite. A minor problem is actually a serious problem.' Satellites wouldn't be the only spacecraft potentially in the line of fire. Wiegert warned that the shrapnel cloud could affect the operations of Moon-orbiting spacecraft such as NASA's proposed Lunar Gateway while material displaced by the collision could potentially fall back to the Moon, impeding, rovers and even jeopardizing astronauts with the Artemis program. Based on this model, Wiegert believes global space agencies should devise plans to deflect asteroids headed for the Moon, as well as Earth. A spokesperson from NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office said that while 'planetary defense is not solely confined to near-Earth space,' it would be 'premature to speculate on potential response options' to 2024 YR4 hitting the moon. Wiegert said that we will be able to refine our models on YR4's orbital trajectory when it hurtles back into view of Earth's telescopes in 2028.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Milky Way arcs over Kitt Peak National Observatory
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. On a warm June evening, viewers in Arizona watched the sky burst with color from the clouds of gas and dust that help create our home galaxy, the Milky Way. The Milky Way galaxy is around 100,000 light-years in diameter, containing our solar system and many other objects. Our solar system orbits the galaxy's center, taking about 250 million years to make one revolution. The reason our galaxy is called "the Milky Way" is due to its milky white appearance in the night sky, which, according to Greek mythology, came from the goddess Hera. This image was captured at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. Kitt Peak National Observatory, a a program of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab, hosts the recently retired McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope. According to NOIRLab, the solar telescope honors astronomers Keith Pierce and Robert McMath. For many decades, the McMath-Pierce telescope was the largest solar telescope in the world, standing at 110 feet tall (33 meters), with a 26-foot-diameter (8 m) platform. The telescope worked by reflecting light from a mirror down a 200-foot-long (61 m) concrete optical tunnel. In 2017, the telescope was decommissioned, after decades of serving the scientific community. It is in the process of transitioning to the NOIRLab Windows on the Universe Center for Astronomy Outreach, according to NOIRLab. You can read more about solar telescopes and NOIRLab's research as humans continue to study the sun.
Yahoo
12-06-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant Jets Bigger Than The Milky Way Seen Shooting From Black Hole
A supermassive black hole in the early Universe has been spotted blasting out powerful jets of plasma that are at least twice as long as the Milky Way is wide. Its host galaxy is a quasar called J1601+3102, and we're seeing it as it was less than 1.2 billion years after the Big Bang. Spanning 215,000 light-years from end to end, this is the largest structure of its kind seen in those early stages of the Universe's formation, and astronomers think it can answer some questions about how they grow. "We were searching for quasars with strong radio jets in the early Universe, which helps us understand how and when the first jets are formed and how they impact the evolution of galaxies," explains astrophysicist Anniek Gloudemans of the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab. Jets are a particularly interesting supermassive black hole behavior. When there is enough material close to a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy, it swirls around, forming a disk of material that feeds into the black hole, drawn in by its extreme gravity. That feeding often produces a quasar, blazing with light as the swirling material is heated by friction and gravity to temperatures of millions of degrees. Not all the material falls onto the black hole beyond escape, though. Some of it gets diverted along the magnetic field lines outside the event horizon and accelerated to the black hole's poles, where it is launched into space with tremendous speed. These eruptions of material form jets, and they blast out into space for huge distances. The longest we've found to date are 23 million light-years from end to end, much later in the lifetime of the Universe. However, they only emit light in radio waves, which makes them a little tricky to see. To identify J1601+3102, Gloudemans and her colleagues had to combine observations from multiple telescopes, including the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) Telescope in Europe, Gemini North in Hawaii, and the optical Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas. These observations didn't just reveal the extent of J1601+3102's jets, they allowed the researchers to study the black hole. The amount of light emitted by the quasar activity can be analyzed to reveal the black hole's mass. It's just 450 million times the mass of the Sun, a relatively modest size for a quasar black hole. And it's not scarfing down matter at a particularly high rate, either. These properties suggest that quasars could be more varied than we generally assume. "Interestingly, the quasar powering this massive radio jet does not have an extreme black hole mass compared to other quasars," Gloudemans says. "This seems to indicate that you don't necessarily need an exceptionally massive black hole or accretion rate to generate such powerful jets in the early Universe." The discovery was detailed in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Humanity Has Just Glimpsed Part of The Sun We've Never Seen Before 'City-Killer' Asteroid Even More Likely to Hit The Moon in 2032 The Center of Our Universe Does Not Exist. A Physicist Explains Why.
New York Post
11-06-2025
- Science
- New York Post
Odds of ‘city-killer' asteroid hitting the Moon go up again
A 'city-killer' asteroid that, until a few months ago, was believed to be a threat to Earth is increasingly looking like it could crash into the Moon in 2032. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was discovered on Dec. 27 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile. Advertisement Since its discovery, the asteroid has warranted international attention, jumping to the highest asteroid threat on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale. In February, new ground-based observations dropped those chances of an Earth impact enough that asteroid 2024 YR4 is no longer considered a threat to Earth. The international astronomy community continues to closely watch asteroid 2024 YR4, which is no longer visible through ground-based telescopes until 2028. In May, a team led by Andy Rivkin, with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, used the James Webb Space Telescope's (JWST) Near-Infrared Camera to hone in on 2024 YR4. Advertisement 4 Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a slight chance of hitting the Moon in 2032. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor / SWNS 4 An animation showing the asteroid passing the Earth and heading too the Moon. AP JWST data, along with expert analysis from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, have refined the asteroid's orbit, increasing the chances of a crash with the Moon on Dec. 22, 2032, from 3.8% to 4.3%. In February, the odds of a Moon impact were about 1.7%. Advertisement However, NASA said if the asteroid does collide with the Moon, it will not alter its orbit. The Moon is covered in crater impacts from other space collisions. 4 The international astronomy community continues to closely watch asteroid 2024 YR4, which is no longer visible through ground-based telescopes until 2028. NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/R. Proctor / SWNS 4 The James Webb Telescope captured images of the asteroid in the darkness of space. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Andy Rivkin (APL) Advertisement Previous observations by JWST helped determine 2024 YR4 is about 200 feet wide, or about the height of a 15-story building, Rivkin wrote in an April blog post for NASA. Asteroid 2024 YR4 has dipped behind the Sun and beyond Webb's view for now.
Yahoo
31-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Space photo of the day for May 30, 2025
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. A bright meteor, also called a fireball, is seen falling into Earth's atmosphere. From the perspective of the camera, it appears in the sky above the dome of Kitt Peak National Observatory. Kitt Peak National Observatory is in the Sonoran Desert, in Tucson, Arizona. The area was chosen for its access to dark skies and its altitude — over a mile (2.1 kilometers) above sea level — placing the telescope above most of our planet's thick atmosphere. According to NOIRLab (National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory), which, like, Kitt Peak is a project of the National Science Foundation, a meteor streak has to be brighter than how the planets appear in the sky (an apparent magnitude of –4 or brighter) to be considered a "fireball." You can read more about meteors and learn when meteor showers are expected this year. You can also read more about Kitt Peak National Observatory.
