Astronomy news
Huge new planet tells of game of planetary billiards
Aug 12, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists has found a new planet which orbits the wrong way around its host star. The planet, named WASP-17, and orbiting a star 1000 light years away, was found by the UK's WASP ...
Trigger-Happy Star Formation
Aug 12, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A new study from two of NASA's Great Observatories provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our Galaxy. The research shows ...
Variability of type 1a supernovae has implications for dark energy studies
Aug 12, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The stellar explosions known as type 1a supernovae have long been used as "standard candles," their uniform brightness giving astronomers a way to measure cosmic distances and the expansion ...
Scientists discover storms in the tropics of Titan
Aug 12, 2009 |
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For all its similarities to Earth -- clouds that pour rain (albeit liquid methane not liquid water) onto the surface producing lakes and rivers, vast dune fields in desert-like regions, plus a smoggy orange ...
Particles as tracers for the most massive explosions in the Milky Way
Aug 11, 2009 |
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Astronomers recently observed a mysterious flux of particles in the universe, and the hope was born that this may be the first observation of the remnants of "dark matter". But scientists from the University ...
The violent youth of solar proxies steer course of genesis of life
Aug 10, 2009 |
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Just how rare life is in the Universe is one of the key questions in the natural sciences today. By pulling in multidisciplinary expertise from biology, geology, physics and astronomy, astrobiologists are ...
Planet Smash-Up Sends Vaporized Rock, Hot Lava Flying (w/ Video)
Aug 10, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a high-speed collision between two burgeoning planets around a young star.
First black holes born starving (w/ Video)
Aug 10, 2009 |
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The first black holes in the universe had dramatic effects on their surroundings despite the fact that they were small and grew very slowly, according to recent supercomputer simulations carried out by astrophysicists ...
Kepler Detects Atmosphere of Hot World
Aug 06, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's new exoplanet-hunting Kepler space telescope has detected the atmosphere of a known giant gas planet, demonstrating the telescope's extraordinary scientific capabilities. The discovery ...
Seeing the Cosmos Through 'Warm' Infrared Eyes
Aug 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than ...
Astronomers Find Hyperactive Galaxies in the Early Universe
Aug 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per ...
Double engine for a nebula
Aug 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The new image, showing a very rich field of stars towards the Carina arm of the Milky Way, is centred on the star HD 87643, a member of the exotic class of B[e] stars [1]. It is part of a ...
Cosmic Dance Helps Galaxies Lose Weight
Jul 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A study published this week in the journal Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The research may settle an outstanding puzzle in unders ...
Wind estimate 'shortens Saturn's day by five minutes'
Jul 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A new way of detecting how fast large gaseous planets are rotating suggests Saturn’s day lasts 10 hours, 34 minutes and 13 seconds - over five minutes shorter than previous estimates that ...
Sharpest views of Betelgeuse reveal how supergiant stars lose mass
Jul 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Betelgeuse -- the second brightest star in the constellation of Orion (the Hunter) -- is a red supergiant, one of the biggest stars known, and almost 1000 times larger than our Sun. It is ...
