Space
- Radio Telescopes Map The Milky Way
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Astronomers using using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, and data from NASA's Spitzer and WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) satellites have discovered hundreds of previously-unknown sites ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 12 2013 - 5:30am
- The Mystery In The Clouds
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There's a mystery in them there clouds- but astronomers at Caltech are on the case. Near the crowded galactic center, billowing clouds of gas and dust hide a supermassive black hole 3,000,000X as massive as our sun, Its gravity is strong enough to gr ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2013 - 2:22pm
- NGC 6872 Declared The Largest-known Spiral Galaxy
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The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6872 has been considered a candidate for the biggest stellar system for decades and now a team of astronomers has officially crowned it the largest- so far. ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 10 2013 - 9:16pm
- Saturday in Space: Orion Bullets
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I experienced the highest density of colleagues with background from astrophysics when I worked at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. Mapping seems like an earthly matter, per definition, but it never was and never will be. First of all our planet Earth is e ...
Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 12 2013 - 8:06am
- Hydrocarbon Sand Is Like Makeup For Titan
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Most moons look ancient because their faces are pockmarked by thousands of craters but Titan, Saturn's largest moon, gets constant retouching because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic, hydrocarbon sand are slowly but steadily filling in ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 18 2013 - 11:00am
- SS433 Microquasar Impact On W50 Supernova Bubble
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A new view of 20,000-year old supernova remnant W50 provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee. W50 is nearly 700 light years across, so it covers two degrees on the sky- the sp ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 19 2013 - 7:34pm
- Saturday in Space: Quasars
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No, it is NOT a star! Several orders of magnitudes far from being a star actually. I am talking about quasars (quasi-stellar radio source)- often being described as distant stars. Oh, astronomers pain. ...
Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 20 2013 - 7:34pm
- Saturday in Space: Stylish Saturn
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Saturn rocks! Or rather not, actually. The planet is made of gas for the most part, but it does have a belt of dust infested ice around it. It is this belt that makes Saturn the 'template' planet. If we want to draw a planet, it is much like a si ...
Blog Post - Bente Lilja Bye - Jan 26 2013 - 9:28am
- LRLL 54361: Binary Star Spied Gobbling Its First Meal
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Newly forming stars feed on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth and a team of astronomers reported observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits infrared light bursts, suggesting it may be a bin ...
Article - News Staff - Jan 31 2013 - 3:07pm
- Messier 106, You Big Onion Of Cosmic Complexity
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Messier 106 looks like lots of other galaxies yet it hides a number of secrets. But now, it has slightly fewer than before, thanks to citizen science astronomers. ...
Article - News Staff - Feb 5 2013 - 1:00pm