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  From - Sky & Tlescope,   By - Monica Young,   Edited by - Amal Udawatta, This artist’s concept shows the hot, molten moon emerging from a synestia, a giant spinning donut of vaporized rock that formed when planet-sized objects collided. The synestia is in the process of condensing to form the Earth. The illustration of the synestia is based on a NASA artist's rendering of a protoplanetary disk. Sarah Stewart    A star’s sudden brightening and, two years later, its sudden dimming point to a cataclysmic collision between two large worlds. Astronomers have caught two infant worlds slamming together around a young, Sun-like star more than 1,800 light-years away in the constellation Puppis. The impact probably vaporized both planets, creating a huge cloud of debris that still orbits the host star. Ultimately, the vaporized material will settle to form a new, much larger world — and astronomers are watching it all as it happens. The planetary collision provides a rare glimpse into

    From - Knowable Magazine,   By -   By - Elise Cutts,   Edited by  Amal Udawatta, Twitte      In June, astronomers reported a disappointing discovery: The James Webb Space Telescope failed to find a thick atmosphere around the rocky planet TRAPPIST-1 C, an exoplanet in one of the most tantalizing planetary systems in the search for alien life. The finding follows similar news regarding neighboring planet TRAPPIST-1 B, another planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system. Its dim, red star hosts seven rocky worlds, a few of which are in the habitable zone — at a distance from their star at which liquid water could exist on their surfaces and otherworldly life might thrive. What it would take to detect that life, if it exists, isn’t a new question. But thanks to the JWST, it’s finally becoming a practical one. In the next few years, the telescope could glimpse the atmospheres of several promising planets orbiting distant stars. Hidden away in the chemistry of those atmospheres may be the first hin

 From - Knowable Magazine  By -  Dan Falk,  Edited by - Amal Udawatta, At the heart of the Big Bang model of cosmic origins is the observation that the universe is expanding, something astronomers have known for nearly a century. And yet, determining just how fast the universe is expanding has been frustratingly difficult to accomplish. In fact, it’s worse than that: Using one type of measurement, based on the cosmic microwave background — radiation left over from the Big Bang — astronomers find one value for the universe’s expansion rate. A different type of measurement, based on observations of light from exploding stars called supernovas, yields another value. And the two numbers disagree. As those measurements get more and more precise, that disagreement becomes harder and harder to explain. In recent years, the discrepancy has even been given a name — the “ Hubble tension ” — after the astronomer Edwin Hubble, one of the first to propose that the universe is expanding. The univers

  From - Sky & Telescope, By -    Emily Lakdawalla,  Edite by - Amal Udawatta NASA's Psyche spacecraft takes a spiral path to the asteroid Psyche, as depicted in this graphic that shows the path from above the plane of the planets, labeled with key milestones of the prime mission. The test periods for NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration are indicated with red dots. NASA / JPL-Caltech NASA’s newest mission is bound for the metallic asteroid of the same name, a metal-rich world that offers an insider’s view of planet formation. With solar panels the size of a singles tennis court, Psyche the spacecraft will use the tiny but constant push from ion engines to spiral outward from the Sun, flying past Mars in spring 2026 and arriving into orbit at asteroid 16 Psyche in August 2029. Why 16 Psyche? Because it’s metal, or at least, metal-rich. Its unusual spectral properties hint at exposed metal on the surface, like iron asteroids. The metal mig