A few things astronomical have been hitting the news and the blogs lately. If you are interested in this kind of thing (because, like, you might be taking an astronomy course, after all…) feel free to click.
(It’s free!)
Astronomers find the smallest black hole (courtesy: the Universe Today)
Black holes seem to have no upper limit; some weigh in at hundreds of millions of times the mass of the Sun. But how small can they be? Astronomers have discovered what they think is the least massive black hole ever seen, with a mere 3.8 times the mass of the Sun, and a diameter of only 25 km (15 miles) across.
Saturn’s rings: now you see them, soon you won’t (courtesy: Astronomy Today)
What first comes to mind when you hear the name Saturn? Rings, right? If the rings are what you want to view, you should do it soon. In September of next year you won’t see them, at least for awhile.
Astronomers find baby planet (courtesy: Scienceblog)
Scottish astronomers have found a baby planet still in the stages of forming and encased within a ‘womb’ of gas.
The finding provides a unique view of how planets take shape, because the supporting images also shows the womb-like parent disk material from which the new planet formed. The ‘protoplanet’, called HL Tau b after its parent star HL Tau, could be as young as a few hundred years old.
