Space

Chandra Observatory Reveals Spectacular X-Ray Tails

An international team of astronomers has viewed two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is believed to be forming stars where few stars have been formed before. The new observation was made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and is de ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 22 2010 - 1:00pm

What To Do About Near-Earth Objects?

In a recently released report the National Research Council lays out several options NASA could pursue in order  to detect more near-Earth objects (NEOs) – asteroids and comets that could pose a hazard if they cross Earth's orbit. While impacts by lar ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 28 2010 - 4:28pm

Scientific Clogging

Scientific Clogging A recent story about NASA's water recycling system is clogging Google search results.  Apparently, excess calcium in astro-urine is clogging the International Space Station's recycling system. Engineers trouble-shooting a pro ...

Blog Post - Patrick Lockerby - Jan 25 2010 - 7:36pm

Peeing In Space

Take 2 minutes with Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield and you too will know how to pee in space.  And the origins of shooting stars.   He starts with "when you go to the bathroom on Earth, you are relying on gravity, pretty heavily... imagine if you w ...

Article - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Jan 26 2010 - 9:33am

Stellar-Mass Black Hole Discovered In NGC 300

Astronomers have discovered another black hole with a mass over fifteen times that of the Sun, one of only three such objects found so far. The newly announced black hole lies in a spiral galaxy called NGC 300, six million light-years from Earth. "Thi ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 28 2010 - 12:35am

NGC 3603 Shows Off Family Picture Of Stars In Different Life Stages

The starburst region NGC 3603 is a cosmic factory where stars form frantically from the nebula's extended clouds of gas and dust. Located 22 000 light-years away from the Sun, it is the closest region of this kind known in our galaxy, providing astron ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 7:01pm

Galactic Survey Helps Explain Evolution Of Hubble Sequence

For the first time, a team of astronomers has completed a demographic census of galaxy types at two different points in the Universe's history — in effect, creating two Hubble sequences — that help explain how galaxies form. The survey of 116 local ga ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 7:01pm

VISTA Sees Orion In A Whole New Light

The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), the latest addition to ESO's Paranal Observatory (eso0949), has captured a dramatic new image of the Orion Nebula. The New telescope is the largest survey telescope in the world and is d ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 7:02pm

New Interstellar Medium Map Amazes

Yesterday a press release about a new interstellar medium map that has been published (PDF) in Astronomy and Astrophysics caught my eye. A French-American team of astronomers, combining previously published results with new data, mostly gathered through ob ...

Blog Post - Anonymous - Feb 10 2010 - 12:26pm

AGN 3C 33- Unraveling Black Hole Spin

Every galaxy we know about has a collection of black holes that can each be up to 10 times the sun’s mass. In addition to these black holes, there is one to rule them all; a supermassive black hole embedded in the heart of each galaxy, roughly one million ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 11 2010 - 10:33am