The James Webb Space Telescope has found traces of water vapor in the atmosphere of a super-hot gas giant exoplanet that orbits its star in less than one Earth day. The exoplanet in question, WASP-18 b, is a gas giant 10 times more massive than the solar system‘s largest planet, Jupiter. The planet is quite extreme, as it orbits the sun-like star WASP-18, which is located some 400 light-years away from Earth, at an average distance of just 1.9 million miles (3.1 million kilometers). For comparison, the solar system’s innermost…
Read MoreMonth: June 2023
Dark Sky Utah: A complete guide to astro-travel in America’s darkest state
It’s impossible to talk about astrotourism without mentioning Utah. The Beehive State in the southwest of the U.S. is home to no fewer than 22 national parks, state parks and other beauty spots protected by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). Some, like Arches, Canyonlands and Bryce Canyon are world famous not only for their dark skies but for their incredible red rock scapes that make them a magnet for astrophotographers as well as stargazers. Even to list every International Dark Sky Park would be to merely scratch the surface because…
Read MoreNASA Looks Back at 50 Years of Gamma-Ray Burst Science
Fifty years ago, on June 1, 1973, astronomers around the world were introduced to a powerful and perplexing new phenomenon called gamma-ray bursts, now seen somewhere in the sky about once a day on average. Astronomers think the bursts arise from catastrophic occurrences involving stars in distant galaxies, events thought to produce new black holes
Read More