01 September 2017
TRAPPIST-1 planets could contain substantial amounts of water
... starlight can break water vapour in the atmospheres of exoplanets into hydrogen and oxygen.” This happens when photons of a certain energy break the bonds of molecules into their constituent atoms. This is a process known as photodissociation and...
20 September 2017
A new way to 'weigh' extragalactic black holes
... in. As this material is accreted onto the black hole it can reach a temperature of around 105 K whilst emitting energetic photons at optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths. These X-ray sources have been mistaken in the past for fast...
24 January 2018
Scientists uncover common origin for ultrahigh-energy particles
... Space Telescope and other ground-based observatories to have energies more than a billion times higher than a photon of visible light. Neutrinos on the other hand are mysterious, neutral subatomic particles that rarely interacts with...
18 April 2018
Ambitious Galactic survey to help find Sun's lost family
... at specific wavelengths. Collecting light from each star is very time consuming – it takes about an hour to collect enough photons of light for each star in order to scrutinise its spectra. Luckily the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at the...
11 May 2018
Revolutionary X-Ray navigation system to be used on CubeSat mission
.... To determine how the Moon formed, CubeX would use a technique called X-ray fluorescence, or XRF to capture “fluorescing” photons with a tiny X-ray optic and an onboard spectrometer. XRF works by detecting X-rays emitted from individual atoms...
23 July 2018
Small box with big designs to find the missing matter in the Universe
... (3.6 million degrees Fahrenheit) and while other NASA telescopes such as Chandra can pick up these super hot photons, it can only do so in a small patch of sky at any one time. HaloSat on the other hand will look at the...
