Space

SN2011fe- Supernova Caught 11 Hours After It Exploded

Type Ia supernovae, the extraordinarily bright "standard candles" astronomers use to measure cosmic growth which led to the theory of dark energy in 1998 and 13 years later to a Nobel Prize  "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion o ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 18 2011 - 3:31am

Milky Way's Central Black Hole Slowly Rips Apart A Gas Cloud

Galaxies are theorized to have massive black holes at their centers but the one in the Milky Way is the only supermassive black hole  close enough for astronomers to study in detail. A recent violent encounter is a unique chance to observe how a black hole ...

Article - News Staff - Dec 19 2011 - 6:02am

High Resolution Images Of Vesta By DAWN

NASA is featuring the first high-resolution images of asteroid Vesta as taken by the DAWN spacecraft during a low-altitude orbit. The images show a very interesting surface, battered with old and more recent craters, plus " textures such as small groo ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Dec 23 2011 - 3:32pm

Stars That Ring Like Bells

Time to ring in a new year with pressure waves.  We can see, but not, hear true sonic waves generated from stars, as the planet-hunting Kepler space telescope is finding.  We also get to learn a new word, 'astroseismology': the study of pressure ...

Article - Alex "Sandy" Antunes - Jan 6 2012 - 6:47am

Dark Atoms and Mirror Matter

  Over in print media today, New Scientist 's cover article was on a "new" idea for what dark matter is. Apparently, dark matter should be composed of Dark Atoms, in a theory introduced by Christopher Wells, et al. In fact, astronomers and p ...

Blog Post - Barry Adams - Jan 7 2012 - 10:48am

El Gordo- One Fat Galaxy

An extremely hot, massive young galaxy cluster named ACT-CL J0102-4915 is the largest ever seen in the distant Universe, and has been has been nicknamed El Gordo — the "big" or "fat one" in Spanish. It consists of two separate galaxy su ...

Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2012 - 5:00pm

Could Dark Matter Be Technologically Useful?

  Following on my last article, I'd like to ask the question, weither some day, dark matter might be useful or even vital to a civilisation.  This depends on the properties of the stuff, which of course we haven't found yet. But it seems the stan ...

Blog Post - Barry Adams - Jan 11 2012 - 11:12am

NGC 3324- Carina Nebula's Hot Pocket Of Star Formation

NGC 3324, on the northern outskirts of the chaotic environment of the Carina Nebula in the constellation of Carina (The Keel, part of Jason’s ship the Argo), is about 7500 light-years from Earth and has been sculpted by many other pockets of star formatio ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 1 2012 - 5:00am

Baby Stars And The Sword Of Orion

Astronomers have detected rapid changes in the brightness of embryonic stars within the well-known Orion Nebula, 1,350 light years from Earth, which appears prominently in the winter skies for European observers.  Sometimes referred to as the Sword of Orio ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 1 2012 - 11:02am

Oxygen Detected On Saturn's Moon, Dione

A research team has announced discovery of molecular oxygen ions (O2+) in the upper  atmosphere of Dione, one of the 62 known moons orbiting Saturn.  ...

Article - News Staff - Mar 5 2012 - 5:45pm