Infinity Cosmos

  That NASA's Mars rover, Perseverance, achieved a remarkable feat by navigating through a field of boulders that was more than 1,700 feet wide, and it did so in about one-third of the time it would have taken previous Mars rovers. This challenging terrain was called "Snowdrift Peak." What makes this achievement even more impressive is that Perseverance managed the detailed navigation of this rocky field on its own, thanks to a self-driving system called AutoNav. AutoNav is designed to autonomously guide the rover, allowing it to move efficiently between different scientific points of interest on Mars. Since its landing on Mars in February 2021, Perseverance has been setting speed records for rovers on the planet. The success of AutoNav in helping Perseverance navigate tricky terrains like Snowdrift Peak was documented in a paper published in the journal Science Robotics in July. The passage also mentions Tyler Del Sesto, who has been working on the software for Persevera...

  The discovery of an enormous planet orbiting a dying star, known as 8 Ursae Minoris b, is shaking up our understanding of how planets form and the limits of stellar destruction. Astronomers have been surprised to find the planet in a stable, nearly circular orbit around the star, as it had been expected that the red giant would have expanded beyond the planet’s orbit before shrinking to its current size. This means that any planets orbiting closely would have been engulfed and ripped apart. This discovery relied on precise measurements from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), and suggests that planet formation and destruction processes are more complex and unpredictable than previously thought. As stars like our Sun approach the end of their lives, they exhaust their nuclear fuel and become red giants, expanding to their maximum size. In this case, the star would have grown to 0.7 AU - three-quarters the distance from Earth to the Sun. It would have destroyed any...

  Arp 107, a pair of galaxies in the midst of a cosmic collision. using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), we can get a great look at this amazing phenomenon. The larger galaxy in the image is a Seyfert galaxy, a type of powerful and energetic galaxy with an active galactic nucleus at its core. This intense activity radiates throughout the entirety of the galaxy, something that is very visible in this image. Arp 107 is part of a catalogue of 338 galaxies known as the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies,the smaller galaxy is connected to the larger one by a bridge of gas and dust. According to current estimates, Arp 107 lies about 465 million light-years away from us here on Earth. It was first catalogued in 1966 by Halton Arp as part of his Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies. Its inclusion in this catalogue makes it an ideal candidate for observation by the Hubble telescope. In fact, Arp 107 has become something of a poster child for this observational “gap” th...

  The grand-design spiral galaxy M51 is enveloped by graceful and winding arms that are captured in this image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope. Unlike other galaxies which have ragged or disrupted spiral arms, M51 has prominent and well-developed arms that are clearly visible. This portrait was taken by the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI) of the telescope and shows a stunning filamentary medium, where empty cavities and bright filaments alternate to form a wave-like pattern emanating from the spiral arms. The yellow regions indicate newly formed star clusters in the galaxy, which are illuminated by the reprocessed stellar light by dust grains and molecules in the medium of the galaxy. M51, or NGC 5194, is a well-studied galaxy pair that lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Canes Venatici. The interaction between these two galaxies has caused them to be one of the better-studied pairs in the night sky. It is thought that the gravitational inf...

  NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has provided an extremely detailed view of Herbig-Haro 211, a young star analogous to our Sun. This nearby star is surrounded by gas and dust which is propelled outward at high speeds due to the stellar winds or jets of gas from the new star. The image taken by Webb showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast and northwest, as well as a narrow bipolar jet that powers them. Webb was also able to detect molecules such as molecular hydrogen, carbon monoxide and silicon monoxide, which are excited by the turbulent conditions and emitting infrared light. These molecules provide an interesting map of the structure of the outflows of Herbig-Haro 211, giving unprecedented detail of this infantile sun-like star. Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these stars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. This image of HH 211 from NASA’s J...

  Gazing out into the night sky, it's easy to be in awe of the wonders of the universe. But there's one particular sight that's truly out of this world: the swirling galaxy IC 1776, located over 150 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pisces. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope recently captured a stunning image of this distant star system, showing its majestic curves and vibrant colors. However, the beauty of IC 1776 belies a much darker secret. In 2015, the Lick Observatory Supernova Search detected a powerful supernova, or explosive stellar death, within its celestial confines. Scientists around the world used both robotic and human telescopes to investigate both the initial burst and its lingering aftermath. Thanks to their efforts, we now know more about what happens when a star dies in a cataclysmic event like a supernova. We can detect these explosions from far away and measure their brightness and spectra before they fade away. In addition to un...

  Messier 89, located in the Virgo constellation, was discovered and catalogued by Charles Messier in 1781. Messier was an astronomer who had grown tired of being mistaken for Halley’s comet after identifying a faint object in the sky. To prevent others from making the same mistake, he created a catalogue of bright deep-sky objects which could potentially be mistaken for comets. This led to the first comprehensive catalogue of astronomical objects - the Messier Catalogue - of which Messier 89 is the last giant elliptical Messier found ,and the most perfectly spherical galaxy in his catalog of 110 objects. This huge ball of stars is made up of around 100 billion stars, each orbiting its own centre at great speed. The seemingly perfect spherical shape of Messier 89 could be just an illusion as most elliptical galaxies tend to be elongated ellipsoids. This could be due to its orientation with respect to Earth.  Messier 89 is unique in many ways. Not only does it have a much highe...

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has begun to study one of the most renowned supernovae, SN 1987A (Supernova 1987A). Located 168,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, SN 1987A has been closely observed at various wavelengths for nearly 40 years since its discovery in February of 1987. Webb's NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) captured a detailed image of SN 1987A, showing a keyhole shape at its center, crescents just to its left and right, an equatorial ring with bright hot spots, diffuse emission and two faint outer rings. Using various colors to represent wavelengths from 1.5 to 4.44 microns (F150W, F164N, F200W, F323N, F405N and F444W), the image provides a crucial clue to understanding how a supernova develops over time to shape its remnant. The study of SN 1987A will hopefully help unlock new mysteries of supernovae and the universe as a whole. SN 1987A's (Supernova 1987A) remarkable image reveals a central structure that resembles a keyhole.This central structur...