NuSTAR: A 2012 Space Odyssey

It’s been an exciting month full of supermoons, solar eclipses, and black holes devouring stars. This week, there will be another exciting development, but one that is much easier to miss. However, it might lead to answering the greatest question ever encountered by humanity: how did we get here?

NASA will be holding a press conference Wednesday regarding the upcoming launch of their NuSTAR probe. NuSTAR, which stands for “Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array,” is the first orbiting telescope of its kind, built and managed by CalTech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. It’s an X-ray telescope, which means that its mirrors are designed to reflect and focus X-rays, allowing scientists to see high-energy waves that our eyes can’t normally detect. This telescope does not emit X-rays like the machine in your doctor's office – it receives X-rays from space and reflects them using mirrors into something we can see...

Read more at The Inclusive: http://theinclusive.net/article.php?id=691

Hapless Star Devoured by Black Hole

Black holes: infinitely deep pits from which nothing can escape. They’ve captured the imaginations of scientists, writers, and the general population, and are commonly found in science fiction, pop culture, and common vernacular. But despite our interest in black holes, we actually know very little about them.

This year has been awash with tales of black holes devouring other cosmic entities. In February, NASA reported that the supermassive black hole at the center of our very own galaxy was “snacking” on asteroids. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins have detected a supermassive black hole approximately two billion light years from us that recently swallowed an entire star.