Astronomy news

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

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

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 28, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (29) | comments 68

(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 ...


The system Gliese 667 (Artist’s impression)

32 New Exoplanets Found (w/ Video)

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 19, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (27) | comments 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 ...


Shedding light on the cosmic skeleton

Shedding Light on the Cosmic Skeleton

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 03, 2009 | popularity 5 / 5 (21) | comments 7

(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 ...


Study of first high-resolution images of Pallas confirms asteroid is actually a protoplanet

Study of first high-resolution images of Pallas confirms asteroid is actually a protoplanet

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 12, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (21) | comments 7

(PhysOrg.com) -- Britney E. Schmidt, a UCLA doctoral student in the department of Earth and space sciences, wasn't sure what she'd glean from images of the asteroid Pallas taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. ...


Carbon atmosphere discovered on neutron star

Carbon Atmosphere Discovered on Neutron Star

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 04, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (19) | comments 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a ten-year ...


Rapid supernova could be new class of exploding star

Rapid supernova could be new class of exploding star

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 05, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (17) | comments 5

(PhysOrg.com) -- An unusual supernova rediscovered in seven-year-old data may be the first example of a new type of exploding star, possibly from a binary star system where helium flows from one white dwarf ...


Dark Matter in a Galaxy

Dark Matter in a Galaxy

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 30, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (19) | comments 19

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stars, the most familiar objects in the night sky, make up only a tiny percentage of the total amount of matter in the universe -- about 2%.


High-precision measurements confirm cosmologists' standard view of the universe

Precise picture of early Universe supports 'dark matter' theory

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 02, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (16) | comments 9

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.


Astronomers do it Again: Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet

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

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 20, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (15) | comments 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 ...


Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 28, 2009 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (14) | comments 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 ...


Discovery of dwarf galaxy a big find for astronomy team

Space & Earth / Astronomy

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

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


The Explosive Disintegration of a Young Stellar System in Orion

The Explosive Disintegration of a Young Stellar System in Orion

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 23, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (12) | comments 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.


The Milky Way's tiny but tough galactic neighbor

The Milky Way's tiny but tough galactic neighbor

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 14, 2009 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (13) | comments 1

In the new ESO image, Barnard's Galaxy glows beneath a sea of foreground stars in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). At the relatively close distance of about 1.6 million light-years, ...


Fermi telescope caps its first year with a glimpse of space-time

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

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 28, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (11) | comments 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 ...


Astronomers seek to explore the cosmic Dark Ages

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 15, 2009 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (9) | comments 1

No place seems safe from the prying eyes of inquisitive astronomers. They've traced the evolution of the universe back to the "Big Bang," the theoretical birth of the cosmos 13.7 billion years ago, but there's still a long ...