Webb Telescope Completes Mirror Coating Milestone At Quantum Coating Inc

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major milestone in its development. The mirrors that will fly aboard the telescope have completed the coating process at Quantum Coating Inc. in Moorestown, N.J.

NASA Completes Mirror Polishing For James Webb Space Telescope

Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone. All of the mirrors that will fly aboard NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have been polished so the observatory can...

Ground-based Lasers Provide Cheaper Way to Map Earth’s Magnetic Field

To measure the Earth’s magnetic field, an orange laser beam is directed at a layer of sodium 90 kilometers above the Earth. The beam is pulsed at a rate determined by the local magnetic field in order to excite spin polarization of the sodium atoms....

Herschel Provides a Detailed Look At the Cool Clouds of Star Birth

This mosaic of the Andromeda spiral galaxy highlights explosive stars in its interior, and cooler, dusty stars forming in its many rings. The image is a combination of observations from the Herschel Space Observatory taken in infrared light (seen in...

Ultraviolet Starlight the Key Ingredient for Making Water in Space

The Herschel infrared space observatory has discovered that ultraviolet starlight is the key ingredient for making water in space. It is the only explanation for why a dying star is surrounded by a gigantic cloud of hot water vapor. Herschel is a European...

Competition to Raise Square Kilometre Array Project Awareness

A competition aimed at raising public awareness about Africa’s bid to host the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) among high school pupils is to be held by South Africa’s Department of Science and Technology.

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope Detects High-energy Gamma-rays From Cygnus X-3

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object — either a neutron star...

An Unexpected Bounty of Near Earth Objects

While scanning through images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory researcher Stephen Kent noticed something unusual — a few extended streaks scattered among the millions of point-like stars and galaxies.