Author Archives: Allen Versfeld

About Allen Versfeld

Allen is an amateur astronomer, an IT professional, a podcaster, a father of five growing kids, a barely competent chess player, and the owner and publisher of the Urban Astronomer podcast and website. He has formerly served as Director of the Astrophotography and Citizen Science sections of the Astronomical Society of South Africa. You can find his personal social media feed on Mastodon!

Carnival of Space #317

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Welcome to the 317th Carnival of Space.  Once again, it’s Urban Astronomers turn to scour the Internet for news and articles on space science and astronomy and bring them together into one place.  We’ve had a lot of submissions this week, so let’s cut straight to the chase: From the Chandra X-ray space telescope’s official blog we have an article titled Too Hot to Swallow: New Chandra results help explain why gas near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole is … Continue reading →

Newly Discovered Jumbo Star Waiting to be Born

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When astronomers pointed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter array (ALMA) at the Spitzer dark cloud SDC335.579-0.292, hoping to study partially developed proto-stars, they were not expecting to discover a record-breaking 500 stellar mass monster. The unborn star, situated some 11000 light years away, is the largest ever seen in the Milky Way, and will likely evolve into a supergiant star some 100 times the mass of the Sun. Stars form in vast clouds of cold gas and dust, which coalesce into … Continue reading →

Water Found Below the Surface of the Moon

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In 2009, the first evidence of water on the Moon was discovered in mineralogical data collected by the Indian Space Research Organisation’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, which identified water molecules on the polar caps of the Moon. The current thinking is that the thin layers of ice are caused by solar winds buffeting the surface of the moon. Although this was a ground-breaking discovery in itself, the real search (and very hard from lunar orbit) has been for “magmatic water”, meaning water … Continue reading →

Galaxy Observed Replenishing Gas Reserves

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This artist’s impression shows a galaxy in the distant Universe, just two billion years after the Big Bang, in the process of pulling in cool gas (shown in orange) from its surroundings. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/ESA/AOES Medialab Astronomers have recently caught a distant galaxy in the act of consuming a vast cloud of primeval gas, allowing it to kick off a new round of star formation and increase its own lifespan. It’s long been suspected that galaxies can do this, but … Continue reading →

Nearby Star has Three Planets in Habitable Zone

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Astronomers studying Gliese 667C, a nearby star in the constellation Scorpius, have expanded on previous observations to find that it has at least 6 planets, with three of them in the habitable zone. These three are all super-Earths, meaning that they’re rocky planets that are several times the size of Earth.  The habitable zone around a star is the distance at which the range of possible temperatures allows for a planet to have liquid water, although this does not guarantee … Continue reading →