Space

Eta Carinae's 1843 Explosion Was A 'Mini' Supernova, Says Researcher

What do you call a supernova that is not as powerful and doesn't destroy the star? A babynova? Subnova? We'll need to think of something, according to Berkeley astronomer Nathan Smith, because that is what happened in 1843 to Eta Carinae, the gal ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2008 - 1:56pm

GRB 080319B- So Bright Your Eyes Could See It From Half A Universe Away

GRB 080319B was so intense that, despite happening halfway across the Universe, it could have been seen briefly with the unaided eye. In a Nature paper, Judith Racusin of Penn State University, and a team of 92 co-authors report observations across the ele ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2008 - 12:57pm

What Really Happened With GRB 080319B? NASA Talks About The Most Intrinsically Bright Object Ever Observed In The Universe

Burst Alert! March 19th was an exciting day for NASA. We know “why” it was special, but we don’t know “ why why” it was special. They finally explain the why why today, and you can read all about it in Nature tomorrow. There was something amazing about GRB ...

Article - Matthew Brown - Sep 11 2008 - 9:13am

The Upper Limit For The Mass Of Black Holes

Natarajan found that ultra-massive black holes, which lurk in the centers of huge galaxy clusters like the one above, seem to have an upper mass limit of 10 billion times that of the Sun. (Credit: NASA) There appears to be an upper limit to how big the un ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 11 2008 - 4:40pm

Wandering Sol- Was Our Sun Always In This Part Of The Milky Way?

A long-standing scientific belief holds that stars tend to hang out in the same general part of a galaxy where they originally formed. Some astrophysicists have recently questioned whether that is true, and now new simulations show that, at least in galax ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 15 2008 - 3:18pm

There's A Dark Matter 'Disk' In Our Own Milky Way Galaxy, Say Researchers

An international team of scientists predict that our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains a disk of ‘dark matter’, in a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Astronomers Dr. Justin Read, Professor George Lake and Oscar Agertz of ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 16 2008 - 11:40am

REJ1034+396 Galaxy Reveals A Black Hole 'Missing Link'

A group of scientists from Durham University say they have found the "missing link" between small and super-massive black holes. The researchers have discovered that a strong X-ray pulse is emitting from a giant black hole in a galaxy 500 millio ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2008 - 12:53pm

Cepheids- Milky Way Motion Not So Complex

Precise measurements by the ESO instrument HARPS now show that the rotation of the Milky Way is simpler than previously thought- the much debated, apparent 'fall' of neighborhood Cepheid stars towards our Sun stems from an intrinsic property of ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 19 2008 - 4:25pm

Oval BA- 'Diffusion' Caused Jupiter's Red Spot Junior To Color Up

A study has given new insights into why Oval BA, a giant anticyclone on Jupiter also known as Red Spot Junior, suddenly turned from white to red in a period of just a few months. The Oval BA is an enormous anticyclone (high-pressure system) that may be com ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 21 2008 - 3:31pm

GRB 080913- Brightest Gamma Ray Burst To-Date Existed Before The Milky Way

A gamma-ray burst is, in a sense, a look back in time. Scientists have now seen one that happened farther back in time than any other seen before. Even before the existence of the Milky Way. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the most powerful and brightest explo ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 22 2008 - 4:54pm