Space

Cosmological Twin Paradox: A Twin Of Our Sun, Except 4 Billion Years Older

When you have only had telescopes for a few hundred years, it can be difficult to determine the history of our Sun and figure out what it was like billions of years ago. One way to do that, and to predict the future of our star, is to find those rare star ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2013 - 11:46am

Low Accretion Rate? Why Super Massive Black Holes Are On A Diet

A long-standing mystery has been why most super massive black holes (SMBH) at the centers of galaxies have such a low accretion rate; they swallow very little of the cosmic gases available and instead act as if they are on a severe diet. The signature X-r ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 29 2013 - 3:56pm

Butterflies? Bizarre Alignment Of Bipolar Planetary Nebulae

Astronomers have explored more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy and found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied pro ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 4 2013 - 11:05am

Solar Activity Is Not Influenced By Other Planets In The Solar System

The Sun is a magnetically active star. Its activity manifests itself as dark sunspots and bright faculae- granular structures that are slightly hotter or cooler than the surrounding photosphere- on its visible surface, as well as violent mass ejections an ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 5 2013 - 10:06am

The Interstellar Wind Changed Direction Over The Last 40 Years

In the classic story "Mary Poppins", the lead character told the children she was caring for that she would stay until the wind changed. Things are a little different in Britain. In many parts of the US, the wind changes every five minutes, but ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 6 2013 - 3:01pm

One Sun Born Per Year: Astronomers Map Galactic Clouds Where Stars Form

Astronomers has begun to map the location of the most massive and mysterious objects in our galaxy – the Southern Milky Way and its giant gas clouds, where new stars are born. ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 11 2013 - 12:39pm

Galactic Bulge: The Peanut At The Heart Of Our Galaxy

Astronomers have provided the best three-dimensional map yet of the central parts of the Milky Way. It shows that the inner regions take on a peanut-like appearance from some angles. This odd shape was mapped by using public data from ESO’s VISTA survey t ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 12 2013 - 10:44am

Electron Plasma Oscillations Confirm Voyager's Departure From The Heliosphere

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has been hurtling away from the Sun since it was launched in 1977 and various reports have indicated that the spacecraft has left the heliosphere, the bubble of hot, energetic charged particles surrounding the Solar System ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 13 2013 - 9:20am

IC 4628:The Prawn Nebula Recipe For Young Stars

6,000 light-years away, in the constellation of Scorpius, nebula IC 4628 is a huge region filled with gas and clumps of dark dust which produces brilliant hot young stars. In visible light, these stars appear as a blue-white color, but they also emit inte ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 19 2013 - 6:47am

Solar Activity: Smallest Sunspot Cycle Since 1906

Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs(1). Prior to that time the predictions are less reliable but planning for satellite orbits and space mis ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 19 2013 - 7:45am