Space

Found: Stellar Nurseries In NGC 253 And A Black Hole 'Twin' Of Our Milky Way's Sagittarius A*

NGC 253 is one of the brightest and dustiest spiral galaxies in the sky but we are always learning new things about it.   Astronomers using the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) near-infrared eye called NACO, an adaptive optics instrument, are now saying t ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 19 2009 - 1:56pm

Cosmologist Says Existing Theories Of Galaxy Formation Are Wrong

Galaxies are the building blocks of the Universe. Each of them comprises some hundred billion radiant stars, such as our sun, which extend across about 50,000 light years. Every galaxy is embedded in a spherical halo made of dark matter that cannot be seen ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 21 2009 - 2:21pm

A Look Inside The Moon's Coldest, Darkest Craters

Using Mini-SAR instrument, a lightweight, synthetic aperture radar, flying aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, scientists are getting their first look inside the moon's coldest, darkest craters.  The images show the floors of permanently-sha ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 22 2009 - 9:01pm

NGC 5128- Centaurus A Jets And Lobes Get A Spectacular New Image

We get a spectacular new into the active galaxy Centaurus A- NGC 5128-  as the jets and lobes emanating from the central black hole have been imaged at submillimeter wavelengths for the first time. Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy- about 13 million ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 28 2009 - 9:55am

200 Light Years Away, HD 80606b Positively Sizzles

Astronomers have observed the intense heating of a distant planet as it swung close to its parent star, providing important clues to the atmospheric properties of the planet.  With that data,  astronomers at the University of California, Santa Cruz were ab ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 29 2009 - 12:40am

Q0957+561, The Twin Quasar, Has Its Brightness Mystery Revealed

Variations in the brightness of the Q0957+561 quasar, also known as the “twin quasar” due to its duplicated image on Earth, are intrinsic to the entity itself and not caused by the gravitational effects of possible planets or stars from a far away galaxy. ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 30 2009 - 6:38pm

Life as a Daytime Astronomer: 3 minutes per day

If it's daytime, why am I as an astronomer even up? But all the other astronomers work days, so dutifully, I'm at work by 9am each day. I code, manage, have meetings. I estimate that I only get 3 minutes of actual astronomical observation in each ...

Blog Post - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Feb 1 2009 - 10:17pm

In Honor Of Darwin Day, The Galapagos Islands From Space

The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago situated some 1 000 km to the west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean.  They were formed by volcanic activity around 10 million years ago. Out of the 19 islands, two are still active volcanoes.   Due to the isolation o ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2009 - 12:42am

14 Runaway Stars Go Ballistic (With Bow Shocks A Trillion Miles Wide)

Some stars go ballistic, racing through interstellar space like bullets and tearing through clouds of gas.   Images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, taken by Raghvendra Sahai of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and colleague ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2009 - 2:09pm

12 Planets? 9 Planets? What's Going On With Pluto?

When kids head back to school this fall, they might have some brand new planets to memorize.   The International Astronomical Union, currently meeting in Prague, is expected to vote on the definition of a planet. The organization, which has named planets a ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 2 2009 - 2:14pm