Space

Blue Stragglers Show How To Be Old But Seem Young, Cosmologically Speaking

Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars bound to each other by their mutual gravity. They are old, relics of the early years of the Universe, with ages of typically 12-13 billion years, and we know of roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milk ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2012 - 4:08pm

NGC 5189: Hubble's Cosmic Tree Ornament Gift To You

Nearby planetary nebula NGC 5189 and its bright gaseous nebula resembles a holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon- so it is perfect for a new Hubble image during the Christmas season.  Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in the life of a medi ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 22 2012 - 1:00pm

Wide Binary Stars Make Each Other Wobble- And Planetary Systems Too

Planetary systems with very distant binary stars are particularly susceptible to violent disruptions, more so than if they had stellar companions with tighter orbits around them, according to a new paper. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2013 - 5:26pm

Baksan: No Dark Matter In A 24 Year Long Exposure Of The Sun!

I just read with interest and awe the nice article appeared today in the arxiv about the search for dark matter annihilation in the sun's core by the Baksan Underground Scintillator Telescope (BUST), a facility operating since December 1978 (!) in the ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Jan 10 2013 - 6:28am

Not So Special: 17 Percent Of Sun-Like Stars May Have Earth-Sized Planets

17 percent of all sun-like stars have planets one to two times the diameter of Earth orbiting close to their host stars, according to a team of astronomers who created their estimate based on an analysis of the first three years of data from NASA's K ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 8 2013 - 6:30pm

The Unusual Orbit Of Fomalhaut B

The debris disk around nearby star Fomalhaut and a mysterious planet may be clues to a titanic planetary disruption in the system.  The debris belt is wider than previously believed, spanning a section of space from 14 to 20 billion miles from the star. A ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 9 2013 - 12:00pm

2MASSJ22282889-431026: The Hybrid Planet-Star With A Stormy Atmosphere

Astronomers have used the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes to simultaneously to peer into the stormy atmosphere of the brown dwarf called  2MASSJ22282889-431026, creating the most detailed "weather map" yet for this class of strange, not-quit ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 11 2013 - 6:00am

Asteroid Belt Discovered Around Vega

Vega is the second brightest star in northern night skies and astronomers using the Infrared Space Telescopes have discovered an asteroid belt much like that of our sun.  Results showing an asteroid belt around Vega makes it more similar to its twin, the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2013 - 8:39pm

Radio Telescopes Map The Milky Way

Astronomers using  using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, and data from NASA's Spitzer and WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) satellites have discovered hundreds of previously-unknown sites ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 12 2013 - 5:30am

The Mystery In The Clouds

There's a mystery in them there clouds- but astronomers at Caltech are on the case. Near the crowded galactic center, billowing clouds of gas and dust hide a supermassive black hole 3,000,000X as massive as our sun, Its gravity is strong enough to gr ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2013 - 2:22pm