Astronomy news

Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton

Space & Earth / Astronomy

16 hours ago | 4.9 / 5 (15) | 3

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the ...

Precise picture of early Universe supports 'dark matter' theory

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Nov 02, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (12) | 6

A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by a Cardiff University scientist.

Solar winds triggered by magnetic fields

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Nov 02, 2009 | 4 / 5 (3) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- Solar wind generated by the sun is probably driven by a process involving powerful magnetic fields, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers based on the ...

Astronomers explore 'last blank space' on map of the Universe

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 28, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (29) | 60

(PhysOrg.com) -- The most distant object ever discovered is described in this week's edition of the science journal Nature. Two international teams of astronomers report their observations of a gamma-ray burst ...

Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 28, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (13) | 3

Cobbling together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a professor at ...

Fermi Telescope Caps First Year With Glimpse of Space-Time (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 28, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (11) | 5

During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. It captured more than one thousand discrete sources of gamma ...

Scientists explain mystery of observed turbulent density fluctuations in interplanetary space

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 28, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (4) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at The University of Alabama in Huntsville have developed a three-dimensional simulation model to understand behavior of interplanetary charged particles in space.

Blast from the Past Gives Clues About Early Universe

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 28, 2009 | 4.6 / 5 (8) | 4

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the ...

New initiative to automate discovery of astrophysical phenomena

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 26, 2009 | 5 / 5 (2) | 2

Automated methods for discovering astrophysical phenomena by sifting through massive amounts of cosmological data are being developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Johns Hopkins University and the University ...

The Explosive Disintegration of a Young Stellar System in Orion

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 23, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (12) | 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- The Orion Nebula is one of the most beautiful sights of the winter night sky, its gas and dust glowing from the intense ultraviolet radiation of a cluster of massive young stars.

Galaxy cluster smashes distance record

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 22, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (10) | 2

The most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes. The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light years away, ...

Building Planet Earth

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 22, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (9) | 1

A new study shows how rocky planets are formed from the manic swirl of gas and dust that surround a young star, and determines what chemical building blocks are used to construct the planets. Understanding ...

Eyes to the skies for the 'Galilean Nights'

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 22, 2009 | 4 / 5 (3) | 1

Astronomers around the world are gearing up for three days of intense sky-watching in honour of Galileo, whose observations 400 years ago revolutionised our understanding of the cosmos.

The CoRoT space mission: Early results

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 22, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (8) | 0

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special issue this week dedicated to the early results of the CoRoT space mission. The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation & planetary Transits) satellite is a 30 centimeter space ...

Astronomers do it Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 20, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (15) | 8

(PhysOrg.com) -- Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize ...

Discovery of dwarf galaxy a big find for astronomy team

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 20, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (13) | 4

In some ways, discovering a new galaxy is all in a day's work for John Cannon, Macalester College assistant astronomy professor.

32 New Exoplanets Found (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 19, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (27) | 6

(PhysOrg.com) -- Today, at an international ESO/CAUP exoplanet conference in Porto, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-metre ...

X-Ray Jets from Galaxies

Space & Earth / Astronomy

Oct 19, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (4) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Some dramatic galaxies eject gigantic, collimated jets of ionized gas millions of light-years long, powered by the massive black holes at their centers. The ionized jets are detected at radio ...