A massive black hole releases sound waves in a deep bass pitch, astronomers have found. Researchers used NASA’s orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to “listen” to wavelengths coming from the heart of the Perseus A Cluster, a giant clump of galaxies 250 million light-years from Earth (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year in a vacuum, about 9.5 trillion kilometers.)
Many stars end their existence by going out in a huge explosion known as a supernova. However, only a few of these stellar explosions have been caught in the act. When they are, spotting them successfully has been down to pure luck—until now. On 11 December 2015 astronomers not only imaged a supernova in action, but saw it when and where they had predicted it would be.
There is a star so close to its parent star that its heated atmosphere is expanding away into space. Some astronomers studying this distant planetary system now believe they have detected water vapor among the gases being liberated. Planet HD 209458b may be evaporating.
Light travels at a speed of 186,282 miles per second. Jupiter is 483,737,000 miles from the Sun. In an effort to convey the vastness of space, Alphonse Swinehart created an animation to illustrate that even the fastest moving thing still takes over 43 minutes just to reach Jupiter.
Irene W. Pennington Planetarium 