Space

More than 10 years after the discovery of the first extrasolar planet, astronomers have now discovered more than 250 of these planets. Until a few years ago, most of the newly discovered exoplanets were Jupiter-mass, probably gaseous, planets. Recently, as ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 13 2007 - 3:17pm

Saturn's Rings: Moon Remnants Or As Old As The Solar System?

New observations by NASA's Cassini spacecraft indicate the rings of Saturn, once thought to have formed during the age of the dinosaurs, instead may have been created roughly 4.5 billion years ago when the solar system was still under construction. Pr ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 10 2009 - 10:12pm

Gamma Ray Explosion GRB 070125 Is A Cosmic Mystery

A cosmic explosion that seems to have occurred thousands of light-years from the nearest galaxy-sized collection of stars, gas, and dust has puzzled astronomers. This "shot in the dark" is surprising because the type of explosion, a long-duration ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 18 2007 - 4:01pm

Real Life 'Death Star' 3C321 Fires At Neighboring Galaxy

A powerful jet from a super massive black hole is blasting a nearby galaxy, according to new findings from NASA observatories. This never-before witnessed galactic violence may have a profound effect on planets in the jet's path and trigger a burst of ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 18 2007 - 5:50pm

'Cosmic Sediment' Places The Solar System At Almost 4.6 Billion Years Old, Say Researchers

UC Davis researchers have dated the earliest step in the formation of the solar system-- when microscopic interstellar dust coalesced into mountain-sized chunks of rock-- to 4,568 million years ago, within a range of about 2,080,000 years. UC Davis postdoc ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2007 - 4:17pm

Doppler Imaging Of BO Microscopii Yields Solar Flare Images 150 Light Years Away

Using observations from ESO’s VLT, astronomers were able for the first time to reconstruct the site of a flare on a solar-like star located 150 light years away- about ten million times further away from us than the Sun is. The study of this young star, BO ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2007 - 7:33pm

HESS J1614-518: Unwrapping The Mystery Of Dark Particle Accelerators

By working in synergy with a ground-based telescope array, the joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)/NASA Suzaku X-ray observatory is shedding new light on some of the most energetic objects in our galaxy, but objects that remain shrouded in m ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 20 2007 - 12:27pm

Polarization Technique Sheds Light On HD189733b

An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina of ETH Zurich’s Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Employing ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 26 2007 - 2:43pm

AE Aquarii Is Sized Like A Dwarf But Acts Like A Pulsar

New observations from Suzaku, a joint Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA X-ray observatory, have challenged scientists’ conventional understanding of white dwarfs. Observers had believed white dwarfs were inert stellar corpses that slowl ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 2 2008 - 7:41pm

First Sunspot Of New 11-Year Solar Cycle Makes Itself Known

A new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, bringing with it increased risks for power grids, critical military, civilian and airline communications, GPS signals and even cell phones and ATM transactions, showed signs it was on its way late Thursday ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 7 2008 - 5:27pm