Space

International Year Of Astronomy Also Means One Last Tuneup For Hubble

From troubled beginnings nearly 18 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionized astronomy and its stunning images have stirred the imaginations of people around the globe. But as the International Year of Astronomy dawns, the renowned telescope ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 3 2009 - 12:18pm

Mapping The Milky Way's Spiral Arms

Iowa State University's Martin Pohl is part of a research team that has developed the first complete map of the Milky Way galaxy's spiral arms. The map shows the inner part of the Milky Way has two prominent, symmetric spiral arms, which extend i ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2009 - 10:26am

Milky Way Even More Awesome Than Previously Believed

Let's face it, with all that talk about life on other planets and dark matter, we lose sight of the big picture.  To start 2009 off right, the Milky Way, our galaxy, wants you to know she is not out of coolness yet.  To wit, new measurements of the Mi ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2009 - 2:23pm

You Are Here: Map Of The Milky Way Answers Questions

We may not be using it for navigation any time soon, but a new map of our own Milky Way galaxy provides other answers about the structure of our galaxy, and resolves conflicting information gathered from previous surveys. Many previous mappings of the Milk ...

Article - Chris Rollins - Jan 6 2009 - 2:15pm

Big Planets Need To Grow Fast Or Die Young

Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomers examined the 5 million-year-old star cluster NGC 2362 with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which can detect the signatures of actively forming planets in infrared light, and found that all stars with the ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2009 - 2:51pm

Brown Dwarf Desert? Yep

Brown dwarfs, objects that are less massive than stars but larger than planets, just got more elusive, based on a study of 233 nearby multiple-star systems by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble found only two brown dwarfs as companions to normal st ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2009 - 3:14pm

Dead Stars And A Story Of A Planet's Birth

Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets-- dead stars.  Observations made with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal six dead " white dwarf " stars littered with the remains of shredded asteroids. This ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 5 2009 - 6:04pm

Cassiopeia A Supernova Remnant Gets Dynamic Visualization

Two new efforts have taken a famous supernova remnant from the static to the dynamic. A new movie of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory shows changes in time never seen before in this type of object. A separate team will also release a dramati ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2009 - 10:38am

Discovered- 12 New Gamma Ray Only Pulsars

NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 12 new gamma-ray-only pulsars and has detected gamma-ray pulses from 18 others. The finds are transforming our understanding of how these stellar cinders work. "We know of 1,800 pulsars, but u ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2009 - 4:55pm

Want To Make A Galaxy? First, Take A Black Hole...

Astronomers say they may have solved one of those classic chicken-and-egg problems, namely, which came first in the early Universe, galaxies or the supermassive black holes seen at their cores. Chris Carilli, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NR ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 6 2009 - 9:39pm