HercuList Secrets

Stars young and old glitter with 'nebulosity' in Hubble telescope photos

The globular star cluster NGC 1850 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in near-infrared (left) and near-ultraviolet (right) to show stars of different ages. (Image credit: ...

Smithsonian

The Ten Most Significant Science Stories of 2022

Smithsonian

From Omicron's spread to a revelation made using ancient DNA, these were the biggest moments of the past year. Carlyn Kranking and Joe Spring. December 28, 2022 7:30 a.m.. Collage of top science stories of 2022 Illustration by Emily Lankiewicz.

China unveils plans for the largest optical telescope in Asia

Peking University wants to build the largest optical telescope in Asia and close the gap in astronomy capabilities with the rest of the world. The project aims to create an initial telescope with an aperture of 19.7 feet (6 meters) by 2024; the mirror ...

Is the Milky Way normal?

Later, a much slower period of star formation in the core occurred, relying on recycled gas blown off of older stars in the outer region. These new stars, made of recycled material, have a higher level of metallicity, with heavier elements grafted into ...

Precise FAST observations reveal circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts

A research team led by Prof. Li Di from the National Astronomical Observatories of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) has revealed circular polarization in active repeating fast radio bursts based on precise observations of the Five-hundred-meter ...

The Seattle Times

The Webb Telescope is just getting started

The Seattle Times

It was launched on Christmas one year ago — after two trouble-plagued decades and $10 billion — on a mission to observe the universe in wavelengths no human eye can see. With a primary mirror 21 feet wide, the Webb is seven times as powerful as the Hubble ...

NASA makes asteroid defense a priority, moving its NEO surveyor mission into the development phase

There's an old adage in the engineering field—what gets funded gets built. So it's sure to be a happy time over at the Planetary Society, as NEO Surveyor, the project the organization has primarily supported over the past few years, has made it through ...

Eating viruses can power microorganism's growth and reproduction

In a turnabout worthy of Pac-Man, DeLong and his colleagues have found that a species of Halteria—microscopic ciliates that populate freshwater worldwide—can eat huge numbers of infectious chloroviruses that share their aquatic habitat.

The surprising reason a Mars rover just started dropping samples

Mashable

Mashable

Sorry, Star Wars fans. What you see is a sealed NASA tube containing samples collected by the Perseverance rover, a car-size lab on six wheels that has been rumbling over the Martian terrain for nearly two years.

Hubble Space Telescope spies young stars amid glowing interstellar gas

This patch of sky is also an emission nebula. The blue haze behind the scattered jewels of the open cluster signals to astronomers that star formation recently finished or is still underway.