Find 20 epic spaces you may have missed in 2020


Medical discovery dominated the news in 2020, but astronomers continued their work even in epidemic conditions. They hunted through radio waves for mystery signals, discovered new galaxies and even discovered that alien star systems were able to detect Earth.

Radio emissions from an alien world

An artist's depiction of an exoplanet tau bots b shows a magnetic field, which is why radio emission scientists believe they have discovered.

An artist’s depiction of an exoplanet tau bots B showing a magnetic field, which is why radio emission scientists believe they have discovered. (Photo credit: Jack Madden / Cornell University)

The planets in the solar system emit radio waves, especially Jupiter with its intense magnetic fields. Researchers taking signals from the gas giant of the Tau Boatz system, just one light-year from Earth, have so far found no radio waves coming from an extraterrestrial planet. That signal will help them to learn more about the magnetic field of that exoplanet, which can give an indication of what is going on in its atmosphere.

X-ray blobs erupting from the galaxy

This false color map shows the new found X-ray bubbles (yellow and red) above the galactic center.

This false color map shows the new found X-ray bubbles (yellow and red) above the galactic center. (Image credit: MPE / IKI)

Millions of years ago, an explosion at the center of the galaxy caused material to rise above and below the galactic disk. That material is still visible, shining in the gamma ray spectrum in two clamps found in 2010, known as Fermi bubbles. In 2020, researchers found another pair of blobs in the same field, visible in the X-ray spectrum. Probably related to the Fermi bubble, the final and uninterrupted features of the galaxy’s 25,000-light-year Fermi bubbles, lasting up to 45,000 light-years. Researchers named them “erosita bubbles.”

The long-lost rocket booster

This animation shows the progressive orbit of 2020 SO, which was captured by the Earth's gravity on November 8, 2020.  The strangeness of space will escape in March 2021.

This animation shows the progressive orbit of 2020 SO, which was captured by the Earth’s gravity on November 8, 2020. Space Audit will escape in March 2021. (Image Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

In 2020, Earth acquired a new “minimun”, one of the many objects encountered in space from time to time on Earth that ends up in orbit around our planet. But a close investigation by amateur and professional space observers revealed that the minimum was not a natural thing, but a rocket booster launched by NASA in the 1960s.

Haunted radio circles

Against the background of galaxies at optical wavelengths, Ghostly ORC1 (blue / green) is the orange galaxy in the center of the ORC, but we do not know if it is part of the ORC, or just a coincidence.

Against the background of galaxies at optical wavelengths, Ghostly ORC1 (blue / green) is the orange galaxy in the center of the ORC, but we do not know if it is part of the ORC, or just a coincidence. (Image credit: Barbel Koribalsky, based on ASKAP data, with [Dark Energy Survey](https://www.darkenergysurvey.org)

Scientists often find objects in space that fade, but new odd radio circles (ORCs) discovered in 2019 and reported in 2020 are special. Round blobs, visible in radio telescope data, do not look like any known like object. They are not supernova remnants, or optical effects called Einstein rings. Some scientists have also suggested that they may be deworming throat. But no one really knows what these newly discovered things are.

One million new galaxies

The ASKAP telescope looks like a cluster of large satellite TV dishes pointing in the night sky.

Australian Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) (Image credit: Alex Cherney / CSIRO)

The Australian Australian Outback includes the 83% observable universe during 83 hours of observation in a radio telescope. And it turned out a huge amount of data: 3 million galaxies, a whole million, never seen before. The Australian Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) relies on an 36 antenna to record the sky, but this is the first time all 36 have been used simultaneously for the same project.

A sign of life on Venus?

NASA snaps this image of Venus using its Mariner 10 probe during a 1974 flyby.

NASA snaps this image of Venus using its Mariner 10 probe during a 1974 flyby. (Image credit: NASA)

Venus may be the most hospitable place in the solar system, with swaying acid clouds and hellish temperatures. That’s why astronomers are getting ready to see phosphin, a foul-smelling gas believed to be a potential sign of life on alien planets, they first trained their phosphin-hunting telescope on Venus: they wanted a reference image of a certain dead world. But in a shocking turn, they found the compound in the clouds of Venus.