Welcome to another wonderful week in space exploration. From top-secret military planes going into orbit, to a Nasty weird star, to the brightest galaxy in the Universe, this week has been chock full of surprises and wonder.
We even got our first look at baby supernovae!
It wasn't all good news, though: the Pentagon also warned us about some new space technology that China developed.
Here's what happened this week in space.
Astronomers observe the brightest galaxy in the Universe
The Milky Way may shine like a diamond, but one galaxy outshines them all: WISE J224607.57-052635.0 is brighter than 300 trillion of our suns. Discovered this week with NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), this galaxy also probably has a massive black hole in its center, which explains its brightness: black holes suck in gas and matter, which heats up their disks, which results in a lot of light. Dust around that light heats up, resulting in ultraviolet light, which WISE picked up.
"We are looking at a very intense phase of galaxy evolution," says Chao-Wei Tsai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "This dazzling light may be from the main growth spurt of the galaxy's black hole."
It's the black hole that interest scientists most and they're working on new theories on the birth of such massive structures. It's likely that the "seeds" of this black hole are bigger than we ever thought possible.
Hubble gets Nasty.
Although Hubble has spent years studying a weird older star called "Nasty 1," it wasn't until this week that astronomers believe they've figured out why it's so odd. Astronomers originally categorized Nasty 1 as a Wolf-Rayet star, a star more massive than our sun that constantly changes. However, there's one problem: it doesn't look like that kind of star because it has a disk of gas circling it (something not seen in a typical Wolf-Rayet star). This disk is huge: nearly 1,000 times the size of our solar system.
Astronomers believe that Nasty 1 shows us an evolution phase of stars we haven't observed much yet. The nebula around Nasty 1 is relatively young, so it's likely that some of its outer layer was once lunch for a companion star we haven't seen yet.
The Air Force's mystery robot plane heads back to orbit.
This week, the Air Force sent its robotic X-37B plane back into Earth's orbit, but we still don't know what purpose this vehicle serves. The plane launched aboard a rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral, but all of its activities, along with its cargo, is top-secret. Of course, because of all the secrecy, some believe the space plane is a space weapon of sorts, although the military vehemently denies that notion.
The X-37B previously spent two years in orbit, doing whatever it was that it did. We have no idea how long the plane will stay there this time, so stay tuned.
Pentagon issues new report about Chinese technology meant to disable satellites.
In 2013, the Chinese launched a rocket that the U.S. Pentagon now believes carried a technology that could destroy satellites in orbit. At the time, of course, China called it a basic sounding rocket mission, but even then the Pentagon had its suspicions. Now, the agency has released a report on that mission confirming what it believes as fact.
"The launch profile was not consistent with traditional space-launch vehicles, ballistic missiles or sounding rocket launches used for scientific research," writes the Pentagon in the report. "It could, however, have been a test of technologies with a counterspace mission in geosynchronous orbit."
This report comes after years of warnings from federal agencies about China and Russia's capabilities to threaten satellites.
Congratulations! It's a baby... supernova!
New measurements taken by NASA's Kepler and Swift spacecrafts have uncovered what astronomers believe as three newborn supernovae. This is the first time that we've been able to see direct measurements of such an event, and it's likely we're about to learn a lot of new details about what happens when a star first goes supernova.
Although the Kepler's initial mission of finding exoplanets has come to an end, the spacecraft continues to prove that it can offer valuable scientific data.
"The Kepler spacecraft has delivered yet another surprise, playing an unexpected role in supernova science by providing the first well-sampled early time light curves of Type Ia supernovae," says Steve Howell, a Kepler project scientist. "Now in its new mission as K2, the spacecraft will search for more supernovae among many thousands of galaxies."
[Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]
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