Week in images: 7 - 11 March 2022

Discover our week through the lens

Video: 00:01:00

Spectroscopy is a tool that astronomers use to better understand the physics of objects in space.

The spectrographs on board the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb) provide scientists with the data needed to analyse the materials that make up stars, nebulae, galaxies and the atmospheres of planets.

Light that enters the telescope is split into its different wavelengths by a grating or a prism, forming a spectrum. This spectrum is then focused onto a detector. Light from each chemical element has a unique spectrum, like a fingerprint. The spectrum’s pattern is analysed by astronomers to decipher which atoms

The Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission takes us over the archipelago of Lofoten in northern Norway.

Los Angeles AFB CA (SPX) Mar 11, 2022
The U.S. Space Force (USSF) formally announced the University of Southern California (USC) as its newest University Partnership Program member at a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signing event Feb. 28 at USC. Lt. Gen. Michael A. Guetlein, commander of USSF's Space Systems Command, joined USC President Carol Folt at USC's University Park Campus for the signing. Other Space Systems Comman

Copenhagen, Denmark (SPX) Mar 10, 2022
Danish and Swedish researchers have dated the enormous Hiawatha impact crater, a 31 km-wide meteorite crater buried under a kilometer of Greenlandic ice. The dating ends speculation that the meteorite impacted after the appearance of humans and opens up a new understanding of Earth's evolution in the post-dinosaur era. Ever since 2015, when researchers at the University of Copenhagen's GLO

Washington (AFP) March 11, 2022
The Apollo missions to the Moon brought a total of 2,196 rock samples to Earth. But NASA has only just started opening one of the last ones, collected 50 years ago. For all that time, some tubes were kept sealed so that they could be studied years later, with the help of the latest technical breakthroughs. NASA knew "science and technology would evolve and allow scientists to study the

The time has come to register to attend the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium – one of the largest Earth observation conferences in the world. Taking place on 23–27 May 2022 in Bonn, Germany, and jointly organised with the German Aerospace Center, this prestigious event allows all attendees to hear first-hand about the latest scientific findings on our planet. Attendees will also hear how observing Earth from space supports environmental research and action to combat the climate crisis, learn about novel Earth observing technologies and, importantly, learn about the new opportunities emerging in the rapidly changing sector

Hamburg, Germany (SPX) Mar 11, 2022
With the help of special telescopes, researchers have observed a cosmic particle accelerator as never before. Observations made with the gamma ray observatory H.E.S.S. in Namibia show for the first time the course of an acceleration process in a stellar process called a nova, which comprises powerful eruptions on the surface of a white dwarf. A nova creates a shock wave that tears through

Manchester UK (SPX) Mar 11, 2022
Astronomers have observed primordial material that may be giving birth to three planetary systems around a binary star in unprecedented detail. Bringing together three decades of study, an international group of scientists have observed a pair of stars orbiting each other, to reveal that these stars are surrounded by disks of gas and dust. Research published in The Astrophysical Journal, s