Space

Holiday Wishes From Messier 74 And Hubble

Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is a stunning example of a 'grand-design' spiral galaxy that is viewed by Earth observers nearly face-on. Its perfectly symmetrical spiral arms emanate from the central nucleus and are dotted with clusters of youn ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2007 - 2:56pm

The Evolution Of Binary Stars And Acts Of "Stellar Cannibalism"

In science fiction, binary stars are often shorthand for the exotic. A pair of suns rising over some alien landscape quickly communicates the foreign and the outlandish. But that reaction just shows our bias toward what is familiar. Out in the universe, tw ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2007 - 10:07pm

New Insights About The Origin Of Solar Wind

Images from NASA-funded telescopes aboard a Japanese satellite have shed new light about the sun's magnetic field and the origins of solar wind, which disrupts power grids, satellites and communications on Earth. Data from the Hinode satellite shows t ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 7 2007 - 10:19pm

RX J0822-4300 Is A Fast-Moving Cosmic Cannonball

One of the fastest moving stars ever seen has been discovered with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This cosmic cannonball is challenging theories to explain its blistering speed. Astronomers used Chandra to observe a neutron star, known as RX J0822- ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 8 2007 - 9:54pm

Our Solar System Is Dented

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft has entered a vast region at the edge of our solar system where the solar wind runs up against the thin gas between the stars, called the heliosheath, and what it found is surprising- our solar system is 'dented.' ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 10 2007 - 1:02pm

IPHAS Releases Optical Digital Survey Of The Milky Way

A collaboration of over 50 astronomers, The IPHAS consortium, led from the UK, with partners in Europe, USA, Australia, has released today (10th December 2007) the first comprehensive optical digital survey of our own Milky Way. Conducted by looking at lig ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 10 2007 - 3:44pm

HD 189733b: A 'Murky' Extrasolar Planet

A team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to detect, for the first time, strong evidence of hazes in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a distant star. The discovery comes after extensive observations made recently with Hubble’s ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 11 2007 - 10:47pm

GRAIL: Twin Spacecraft In Tandem Orbits Will Reveal The History Of The Moon

At a Monday meeting of the American Geophysical Union, NASA's Associate Administrator for Science Alan Stern announced the selection of a new mission that will peer deep inside the moon to reveal its anatomy and history. The Gravity Recovery and Inter ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 11 2007 - 5:04pm

Solar Nebula Secret: 4 Billion Years Ago Uranus And Neptune Switched Places

Four billion years ago, says Steve Desch, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University, Uranus and Neptune switched places. His research work appears in this week’s Astrophysical Journal. Desch based his conc ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 11 2007 - 7:05pm

An Astronomer's Explanation For The Star Of Bethlehem

According to the Bible, when Jesus was born three Magi saw a star in the East that 'signaled the birth of a new king'. But just what was it, from an astronomical point of view, that the Magi could actually have seen? Fred Grosse, a professor of p ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 24 2010 - 10:45am