Space

NGC 6872 Declared The Largest-known Spiral Galaxy

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has been considered a candidate for the biggest stellar system for decades and now a team of astronomers has officially crowned it the largest- so far. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2013 - 9:16pm

Saturday in Space: Orion Bullets

I experienced the highest density of colleagues with background from astrophysics when I worked at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. Mapping seems like an earthly matter, per definition, but it never was and never will be. First of all our planet Earth is e ...

Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 12 2013 - 8:06am

Hydrocarbon Sand Is Like Makeup For Titan

Most moons look ancient because their faces are pockmarked by thousands of craters but Titan, Saturn's largest moon, gets constant retouching because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 18 2013 - 11:00am

SS433 Microquasar Impact On W50 Supernova Bubble

A new view of 20,000-year old supernova remnant W50 provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee. W50 is nearly 700 light years across,  so it covers two degrees on the sky- the sp ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 19 2013 - 7:34pm

Saturday in Space: Quasars

No, it is NOT a star! Several orders of magnitudes far from being a star actually. I am talking about quasars (quasi-stellar radio source)- often being described as distant stars. Oh, astronomers pain. ...

Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 20 2013 - 7:34pm

Saturday in Space: Stylish Saturn

Saturn rocks! Or rather not, actually. The planet is made of gas for the most part, but it does have a belt of dust infested ice around it. It is this belt that makes Saturn the 'template' planet. If we want to draw a planet, it is much like a si ...

Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 26 2013 - 9:28am

LRLL 54361: Binary Star Spied Gobbling Its First Meal

Newly forming stars feed on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth and a team of astronomers reported observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be a bin ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 31 2013 - 3:07pm

Messier 106, You Big Onion Of Cosmic Complexity

Messier 106 looks like lots of other galaxies yet it hides a number of secrets. But now, it has slightly fewer than before, thanks to citizen science astronomers. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2013 - 1:00pm

13 Light Years? Earth-Like Planets Could Be Right Next Door (Cosmologically)

Up to six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, so that means the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years away. Red dwarf stars are smaller, cooler, and fainter t ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 6 2013 - 5:44pm

Caught: The Mini-Explosion 40 Days Before A Supernova

Before they go all-out supernova, some large stars undergo a sort of mini-explosion- cosmically speaking- which throws massive amounts of material into space. Though several models predict this behavior and evidence from supernovae point in that direction ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 7 2013 - 10:51am