http://www.physorg.com/space-news/astronomy/ en-us PhysOrg Team PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on astronomy, space, earth science and space exploration. (PhysOrg.com) -- While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date. http://www.physorg.com/news177073969.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-10T11:14:51-07:00 Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang. The finding is the first age-confirmation of a so-called dropout galaxy at that distant time and pinpoints when an era called the reionization epoch likely began. The research will be published in a December issue of the Astrophysical Journal. http://www.physorg.com/news176737523.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-06T13:46:08-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have published the discovery of the farthest known object in the cosmos: a star that exploded when the universe was only 630 million years old -- only 4.6% of its current age. Light from this cataclysm had been traveling towards us for about 13 billion years, finally arriving here last April 23. http://www.physorg.com/news176733128.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-06T12:50:01-07:00 The most probable place to find intelligent life in the galaxy is around stars very similar to our sun, a new study has found. http://www.physorg.com/news176661214.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-05T16:50:01-07:00 A new class of supernova was discovered by scientists at Berkeley and may be the first example of a new type of exploding star. A team of astrophysicists at UC Santa Barbara had predicted this kind of explosion in their theoretical work. http://www.physorg.com/news176654551.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-05T15:50:01-07:00 (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 onto another and detonates in a thermonuclear explosion. http://www.physorg.com/news176653360.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-05T14:33:57-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- The spectacular new camera installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83. http://www.physorg.com/news176638796.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-05T10:20:24-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Before our planets found their way to the stable orbits they circle in today, they wiggled and jostled about like unsettled children. Now, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a young star with evidence for the same kind of orbital hyperactivity. Young planets circling the star are thought to be disturbing smaller comet-like bodies, causing them to collide and kick up a huge halo of dust. http://www.physorg.com/news176576185.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-04T16:56:58-07:00 (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 mystery surrounding this object. http://www.physorg.com/news176567767.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-04T14:37:05-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- The University of Utah will celebrate the initial observations or "first light" of its new $860,000 research telescope in southwest Utah during a Wednesday, Nov. 11 symposium and reception on the Salt Lake City campus. http://www.physorg.com/news176551313.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-04T10:30:01-07:00 (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 most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed. http://www.physorg.com/news176449128.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-03T05:40:02-07:00 Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories. http://www.physorg.com/news176396829.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-02T15:08:03-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- An international collaboration that includes scientists from the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has discovered very-high-energy gamma rays in the Cigar Galaxy (M82), a bright galaxy filled with exploding stars 12 million light years from Earth. http://www.physorg.com/news176391501.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-02T13:50:01-07:00 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. http://www.physorg.com/news176389334.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-02T13:02:40-07:00 The diversity of colours, shapes, and sizes of planetary nebulae make them fascinating objects. In this photo release Calar Alto presents a rather unique view combining both optical and near-infrared data of the Ring Nebula (M57). http://www.physorg.com/news176374973.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-02T09:20:01-07:00 (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 latest observations from the Hinode satellite. http://www.physorg.com/news176369111.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-11-02T08:00:01-07:00 (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%. http://www.physorg.com/news176122887.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-30T12:02:34-07:00 (PhysOrg.com) -- Star clusters are among the most visually alluring and astrophysically fascinating objects in the sky. One of the most spectacular nestles deep in the southern skies near the Southern Cross in the constellation of Crux. http://www.physorg.com/news176014385.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-29T05:54:01-07:00 (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 from a star that died when the Universe was 640 million years old, or less than 5 percent of its present age. http://www.physorg.com/news175969717.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-28T17:30:09-07:00 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 rays -- the highest-energy form of light. Capping these achievements was a measurement that provided rare experimental evidence about the very structure of space and time, unified as space-time in Einstein's theories. http://www.physorg.com/news175961092.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-28T15:06:24-07:00 (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 Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB). http://www.physorg.com/news175958564.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-28T14:23:39-07:00 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 Central Michigan University, describes the process of making the panorama in the November issue of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. http://www.physorg.com/news175948336.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-28T11:32:48-07:00 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news175945526.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-28T10:47:07-07:00 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 of Washington under a new three-year, $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. http://www.physorg.com/news175776639.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-26T12:00:01-07:00 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news175507575.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-23T09:07:12-07:00 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 the dynamics and chemistry that create planetary systems can help astronomers in their search for Earth-like planets in the galaxy. http://www.physorg.com/news175444213.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-22T15:40:01-07:00 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, and is observed as it was when the Universe was only about a quarter of its present age. http://www.physorg.com/news175436330.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-22T13:19:55-07:00 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 telescope, launched on 27 December 2006 from Baikonour. Since then, CoRoT has been orbiting at about 900 km from the Earth, monitoring the changes in brightness of a huge amount of stars with unprecedented accuracy. This aims at both detecting exoplanets by the transit method and studying seismology of a wide variety of stars. http://www.physorg.com/news175428397.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-22T11:20:02-07:00 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. http://www.physorg.com/news175416565.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-22T07:58:39-07:00 (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 planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life. http://www.physorg.com/news175274383.html Space & Earth - Astronomy 2009-10-20T16:20:24-07:00