Month: July 2022

Nebula is a Latin word meaning “cloud”, but in an astronomical context, it refers to any celestial object which appears cloud-like when viewed through a telescope. When telescopes weren’t as powerful as they are today, this term encompassed galaxies such as our neighbour Andromeda, which was often referred to as the “Andromeda nebula”.  However, with the benefit of modern telescopes we know that galaxies aren’t cloud-like at all, but made up of billions of stars. This means astronomers now reserve the word nebula for genuine clouds — of gas and…

It’s only a matter of time before someone is killed by falling space junk. The toll taken by space debris so far includes an Indonesian livestock pen’s fence crushed by a stray fuel tank, a house in the Ivory Coast damaged by a chunk of a first stage, and a woman in Tulsa, Oklahoma, walking in the park who felt a piece of rocket tap her on the shoulder.  The next piece of space debris that falls all the way to Earth’s surface could cause very real casualties, and the…

Scientists have spotted an example of a black hole that should be extremely common but is quite difficult to find. The challenge of discovering what astronomers call dormant black holes comes from the fact that these objects are not actively feeding on matter like gas, dust or stellar material stripped from a companion star. With no feeding, these black holes don’t blast out X-rays, which scientists use to spot typical black holes. The new discovery could have ramifications for understanding how stars collapse at the end of their lives, according…