While astronomers have discovered evidence of thousands of exoplanets, obtaining direct images of the distant worlds has always been a challenge. That's because the planets tend to huddle close to the star they orbit and often get concealed by their star's dazzling light. Of the handful of images captured, most are of a single planet orbiting a Sun-like star.
The photo was captured using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument on the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope in the Chilean Atacama Desert. The powerful device is equipped with a coronagraph to block unwanted light from the host star, allowing the astronomers to view the fainter planets nearby and even capture multiple images at different times to identify the planets and isolate them from stars in the background.
This may worth something:
Fastest-ever star discovered orbiting Milky Way's supermassive black hole - CNET
Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, is surrounded by a group of stars moving at extreme speeds.
And astronomers have just discovered the quickest of the lot, clocking its fastest speed around Sgr A* at 8% the speed of light.
But the research team, using instruments installed at the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile, scoured through images taken between 2004 and 2016, adding five new stars, S4711-S4715, to the population and tracking their movements around Sgr A*. Their results show more evidence that a distinct population of stars orbit Sgr A* at distances comparable to the size of our solar system.
Lasers in daylight can better detect space debris orbiting Earth, new study suggests
In director Alfonso Cuaron’s 2013 space thriller “Gravity,” Sandra Bullock’s astronaut character dons a suit for a spacewalk in orbit around Earth, upgrading hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope.
Nightmare scenarios like that one might keep astronauts and space mission planners up at night. These scenarios could also become a lot less likely, according to a new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.
A more precise and versatile technique for detecting space debris was outlined by researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, so that devastating space collisions will firmly remain in the province of science fiction.
The fastest star ever seen is moving at 8% the speed of light | Space
In the center of our Milky Way galaxy , scientists have spotted the fastest star ever detected, moving at more than 8% of the speed of light.
Our galaxy's center features the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which is as massive as about 4 million suns. Being so massive, it has hundreds of stars pulled closely into its orbit, traveling extra-fast from the gravitational boost presented by this close proximity.
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Another star orbiting close to Sgr A*, called S2 , was once thought for to be the fastest star. But last year, a new speedy contender, the star S62, was detected by a team led by astrophysicist Florian Peissker of the University of Cologne in Germany. At the time, S62was said to be the closest star orbiting Sgr A*, speeding around the black hole .
Quite a lot has been going on:
Hubble Spots Small Moon Orbiting Trojan Asteroid Eurybates | Astronomy | Sci-News.com
The trojan asteroid (3548) Eurybates, one of the targets of NASA's upcoming Lucy mission , has a tiny moon.
This image of Eurybates and its moon (circled) was captured by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on September 14, 2018. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Noll et al , arXiv: 2008.01858.
Trojan asteroids follow the same orbit as a planet, but stay either around 60 degrees ahead or 60 degrees behind along the orbit.
First image of 2 exoplanets orbiting a sun-like star released - CNN
(CNN) About 300 light-years away from us, two giant exoplanets are orbiting a young sun-like star.
Trump administration urges more commercial activities in space | Space
The Trump administration has taken another small step towards its larger leap to commercialize space laboratory activities , even as NASA struggles to put current commercialization plans into place.
While this year's memo has very similar wording to that released last year, according to SpaceNews , there is one key sentence that shows the new prioritization on low Earth orbit (LEO) research.
Related: The NASA monopoly on US orbital spaceflight is ending
More: Presidential Visions for Space Exploration: From Ike to Trump
NASA Space Station On-Orbit Status 14 August, 2020 - Practicing Robotic Maneuvers - SpaceRef
Canada's versatile robotic arm, the 57.7-foot-long Canadarm2, is in place and ready to grapple and release Japan's resupply ship from the International Space Station next week.
The Expedition 63 crew is continuing to pack the cargo craft while training for its robotic release.
Commander Chris Cassidy of NASA will command the Canadarm2 to release the H-II Transfer Vehicle-9 (HTV-9) on Tuesday at 1:35 p.m. EDT. Roscosmos cosmonaut and Flight Engineer Ivan Vagner will support Cassidy at the robotics workstation in the station's "window to the world," the cupola.
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This is one of the most famous images in photographic history. The first ever X-ray image was taken in 1895 by Wil… https://t.co/CuPIc3c1Co NobelPrize (from Stockholm, Sweden) Wed Aug 19 13:51:02 +0000 2020
@padangbolasepak @pipiyapong @RajagobalRg @Khairykj @n_izzah @ShahrilHamdan @fahmi_fadzil @SyedSaddiq… https://t.co/pOP5b4pfbk Bront_Palarae (from Far Away (So Close)) Sat Aug 15 11:43:17 +0000 2020
This image on the right is one of the most important photographs ever made. It is the *first* digital photograph.… https://t.co/wOjXTxXqO0 BWJones (from In The Data) Thu Aug 13 16:28:02 +0000 2020
From 2019: What does it mean to an astrophysicist to see the first-ever image of a black hole? What does it mean to… https://t.co/A5Inm3MwmA QuantaMagazine Thu Aug 13 17:36:01 +0000 2020
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