http://www.physorg.com/space-news/astronomy/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on astronomy, space, earth science and space exploration. (PhysOrg.com) -- A collection of 30 never-before-released images of embryonic planetary systems in the Orion Nebula are the highlight of the longest single Hubble Space Telescope project ever dedicated to the topic of star and planet formation. Also known as proplyds, or protoplanetary discs, these modest blobs surrounding baby stars are shedding light on the mechanism behind planet formation. Only the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, with its high resolution and sensitivity, can take such detailed pictures of circumstellar discs at optical wavelengths. http://www.physorg.com/news180018260.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:05:25 EST news180018260 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of planet hunters has discovered as many as six low-mass planets around two nearby Sun-like stars, including two "super-Earths" with masses 5 and 7.5 times the mass of Earth. The researchers, led by Steven Vogt of the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said the two "super-Earths" are the first ones found around Sun-like stars. http://www.physorg.com/news180016985.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Mon, 14 Dec 2009 12:43:48 EST news180016985 (PhysOrg.com) -- The corona is the hot outer region of the sun's atmosphere. The corona is threaded by magnetic fields that loop and twist upwards from the sun's surface, driven by motions of its dense atmosphere. http://www.physorg.com/news179758481.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 11 Dec 2009 12:59:52 EST news179758481 VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA's main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made -- its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the thickness of a human hair -- and its construction and polishing presented formidable challenges. http://www.physorg.com/news179739402.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 11 Dec 2009 08:10:02 EST news179739402 An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings are published in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics. http://www.physorg.com/news179690529.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:40:01 EST news179690529 (PhysOrg.com) -- This composite image of data from three different telescopes shows an ongoing collision between two galaxies, NGC 6872 and IC 4970. http://www.physorg.com/news179682939.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 10 Dec 2009 15:56:28 EST news179682939 (PhysOrg.com) -- Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets. http://www.physorg.com/news179665092.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:59:29 EST news179665092 Next time you spy the Big Dipper, keep in mind that there is another star, invisible to the unaided eye, contributing to this constellation. http://www.physorg.com/news179651081.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 10 Dec 2009 07:07:05 EST news179651081 (PhysOrg.com) -- A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer. http://www.physorg.com/news179593672.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 09 Dec 2009 16:40:01 EST news179593672 (PhysOrg.com) -- A specialized camera on a telescope operated by U.K. astronomers from Liverpool has made the first measurement of magnetic fields in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB). The result is reported in the Dec.10 issue of Nature magazine by the team of Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) astronomers who built and operate the telescope and its unique scientific camera, named RINGO. http://www.physorg.com/news179593825.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:11:24 EST news179593825 Understanding the evolution of galaxies is one of the biggest questions confronting astronomers today. Looking at distant astronomical objects gives scientists important clues to the origins of the Milky Way Galaxy and other galaxies in the local universe. http://www.physorg.com/news179512073.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:28:26 EST news179512073 (PhysOrg.com) -- Australian astronomers have released the first set of data from the first project to look at the effects of "dark energy" halfway back in the Universe's lifetime. http://www.physorg.com/news179508040.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:21:06 EST news179508040 (PhysOrg.com) -- In 2004, Hubble created the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest visible-light image of the Universe, and now, with its brand-new camera, Hubble is seeing even farther. This image was taken in the same region as the visible HUDF, but is taken at longer wavelengths. http://www.physorg.com/news179489629.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:14:38 EST news179489629 (PhysOrg.com) -- A thin rain of charged particles continually bombards our atmosphere from outer space. The mysterious particles were first detected 100 years ago but until 10 years ago when a new type of telescope began to come online physicists weren't sure where the "cosmic rays" came from or how they were generated. They suspected the particles were accelerated by supernova shockwaves, but suspicions aren't proof. http://www.physorg.com/news179427195.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Mon, 07 Dec 2009 18:30:01 EST news179427195 (PhysOrg.com) -- An extensive study made with ESO's Very Large Telescope deepens a long-standing mystery in the study of stars similar to the Sun. Unusual year-long variations in the brightness of about one third of all Sun-like stars during the latter stages of their lives still remain unexplained. Over the past few decades, astronomers have offered many possible explanations, but the new, painstaking observations contradict them all and only deepen the mystery. The search for a suitable interpretation is on. http://www.physorg.com/news179403810.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Mon, 07 Dec 2009 10:26:07 EST news179403810 (AP) -- NASA's latest space telescope will scan the sky in search of never-before-seen asteroids, comets, stars and galaxies, with one of its main tasks to catalog objects posing a danger to Earth. The sky-mapping WISE, or Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled to launch no earlier than before dawn Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast aboard a Delta 2 rocket. http://www.physorg.com/news179331745.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Sun, 06 Dec 2009 16:30:02 EST news179331745 (PhysOrg.com) -- The first phase of a star's formation are thought to begin deep inside a natal cloud of gas and dust. In the earliest stages, material coalesces under the influence of gravity into so-called "dense cores," which, because they absorb optical light, are sometimes seen in the sky as black shapes against a background of stars or nebulosity. http://www.physorg.com/news179153495.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:40:01 EST news179153495 (PhysOrg.com) -- Data from the satellite, says principal investigator and UCLA professor Edward Wright, will help scientists answer fundamental questions about the history of our solar system, the Milky Way and the univese. http://www.physorg.com/news179141981.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:41:24 EST news179141981 An international team of scientists that includes an astronomer from Princeton University has made the first direct observation of a planet-like object orbiting a star similar to the sun. http://www.physorg.com/news179072298.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:10:02 EST news179072298 Noted for harbouring Eta Carinae -- one of the wildest and most massive stars in our galaxy -- the impressive Carina Nebula also houses a handful of massive clusters of young stars. The youngest of these stellar families is the Trumpler 14 star cluster, which is less than one million years old -- a blink of an eye in the Universe's history. This large open cluster is located some 8000 light-years away towards the constellation of Carina (the Keel). http://www.physorg.com/news179068963.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Thu, 03 Dec 2009 13:23:15 EST news179068963 (PhysOrg.com) -- An extraordinarily bright, extraordinarily long-lasting supernova named SN 2007bi, snagged in a search by a robotic telescope, turns out to be the first example of the kind of stars that first populated the Universe. The superbright supernova occurred in a nearby dwarf galaxy, a kind of galaxy that's common but has been little studied until now, and the unusual supernova could be the first of many such events soon to be discovered. http://www.physorg.com/news179002328.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:30:02 EST news179002328 Every cook knows the ingredients for making bread: flour, water, yeast, and time. But what chemical elements are in the recipe of our universe? http://www.physorg.com/news178996002.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:13:29 EST news178996002 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers at The University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics have discovered one of the hottest stars in the Galaxy with a surface temperature of around 200,000 degrees - 35 times hotter than the Sun. http://www.physorg.com/news178987042.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:37:50 EST news178987042 On Earth, we tend to find dust nothing more than a nuisance that blankets our furniture and causes us to sneeze. Cosmic dust can also be a hindrance to astronomers because cameras using visible light cannot see through it. However, studying cosmic dust in detail helps astronomers to pin down the ingredients of the raw mixture that eventually gives birth to stars. http://www.physorg.com/news178899301.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:16:51 EST news178899301 (PhysOrg.com) -- Which come first, the supermassive black holes that frantically devour matter or the enormous galaxies where they reside? A brand new scenario has emerged from a recent set of outstanding observations of a black hole without a home: black holes may be `building` their own host galaxy. This could be the long-sought missing link to understanding why the masses of black holes are larger in galaxies that contain more stars. http://www.physorg.com/news178804126.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Mon, 30 Nov 2009 11:49:22 EST news178804126 (PhysOrg.com) -- The European Space Agency has today released spectacular new observations from the Herschel Space Observatory, including the UK-led SPIRE instrument. Spectrometers on board all three Hershel instruments have been used to analyse the light from objects inside our galaxy and from other galaxies, producing some of the best measurements yet of atoms and molecules involved in the birth and death of stars. http://www.physorg.com/news178551842.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:45:21 EST news178551842 (PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has made the first unambiguous detection of high-energy gamma-rays from an enigmatic binary system known as Cygnus X-3. The system pairs a hot, massive star with a compact object -- either a neutron star or a black hole -- that blasts twin radio-emitting jets of matter into space at more than half the speed of light. http://www.physorg.com/news178547547.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:34:14 EST news178547547 (PhysOrg.com) -- Ultraluminous infrared galaxies ((ULIRGs) are galaxies whose luminosity exceeds that of a trillion suns; for comparison, the Milky Way galaxy has a typical (and much more modest) luminosity of only about ten billion suns. ULIRGs were discovered by an all-sky infrared survey satellite in the 1980's, and since then the origin(s) of their huge infrared emission has been widely debated. Extreme infrared activity is known to be associated with interacting galaxies, and optical imaging indeed shows that many ULIRGs are in collision, but this fact does not answer the question of what physical mechanism powers the luminosity. Might the same process be underway at a low level in our galaxy? http://www.physorg.com/news178544948.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:55:01 EST news178544948 Sometimes you really can believe your eyes. That's what NASA's STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) spacecraft are telling researchers about a controversial phenomenon on the sun known as the "solar tsunami." http://www.physorg.com/news178395416.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:17:45 EST news178395416 (PhysOrg.com) -- Peering through the thick dust clouds of our galaxy's "bulge" (the myriads of stars surrounding its center), a team of astronomers has unveiled an unusual mix of stars in the stellar grouping known as Terzan 5. Never observed anywhere in the bulge before, this peculiar "cocktail" of stars suggests that Terzan 5 is in fact one of the bulge's primordial building blocks, most likely the relic of a dwarf galaxy that merged with the Milky Way during its very early days. http://www.physorg.com/news178377940.html Space & Earth - Astronomy Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:28:26 EST news178377940