Space

Sun Reaches Quietest Solar Minimum Since 1913

The sunspot cycle is behaving a little like the stock market. Just when you think it has hit bottom, it goes even lower.  2008 was a bear. There were no sunspots observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73 percent). To find a year with more blank suns, ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2009 - 2:40am

Theta 1 Orionis C- A Peek Into The Heart Of The Orion Nebula

A team of astronomers, led by Stefan Kraus and Gerd Weigelt from the Max-Planck-Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) in Bonn, used ESO's Very Large telescope Interferometer (VLTI) to obtain the sharpest ever image of the young double star Theta 1 Ori ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 2 2009 - 11:05am

GRB 041219A Gets Polarized

Integral has captured one of the brightest gamma-ray bursts ever seen. A meticulous analysis of the data has allowed astronomers to investigate the initial phases of this giant stellar explosion, which led to the ejection of matter at velocities close to t ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2009 - 9:11am

Poor SDO (solar physicists' humor)

While the team here discusses our current veeery quiet solar minimum, what are working solar physicists thinking?  Well, from the SPA Newsletter (http://spc.igpp.ucla.edu/spa/spanews.html), a twice-weekly newsletter, came this neat bit of April 1 whimsy: ...

Blog Post - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Apr 3 2009 - 12:39pm

PSR B1509-58: Engine In An X-Ray Nebula 150 Light Years Across

A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509 ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 3 2009 - 10:28pm

NGC 55 And NGC 7793- Two Terrific Views Into The Sculptor Constellation

As part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 Cornerstone project, 100 Hours of Astronomy, the ambitious “Around the World in 80 Telescopes” event is a unique live webcast over 24 hours, following night and day around the globe to some of the most ad ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 4 2009 - 9:43am

Galileo's Day Off

Galileo Galilei Linceo was, among other talents, a solar physicist. While not the first to observe sunspots, he sketched (in 1612) some of the earliest surviving tracings of sunspots. Observing their daily motion, he deduced that a) they were on or near th ...

Article - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Apr 7 2009 - 3:09pm

NGC 7049- Backlit Dust In A Giant Galaxy Cluster

A new Hubble image highlights striking swirling dust lanes and glittering globular clusters in oddball galaxy NGC 7049. The NASA/ESA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of NGC 7049, a mysterious looking galaxy on the border between spiral ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2009 - 10:04am

Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer- GOCE flies

On March 17th 2009 Europe's first geodetic satellite was successfully launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. The first stages of putting the satellite in a stable recording orbit are proceeding according to plans. So far, so good. Credit: ES ...

Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Apr 12 2009 - 10:04am

Hubble photographs triple galaxy

The International Year of Astronomy continues its celebration with a photo of triple galaxy group April 1 and 2. 140,000 people around the world voted on six potential targets; the Arp 274 galaxy group won with 67,000 votes. For some reason I really want ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Apr 7 2009 - 8:51pm