Space

Regularity Versus Diversity: Mysterious Quasar Sequence Explained

Quasars are supermassive black holes that live at the center of distant galaxies. They are the most luminous beacons in the sky, and shine across the entire electromagnetic spectrum due to rapidly accreting matter in their gravitationally inescapable cent ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2014 - 8:00pm

Messier 54 Has A Lithium Problem

The Milky Way galaxy is orbited by more than 150 globular star clusters- balls of hundreds of thousands of old stars dating back to the formation of the galaxy. In the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer), the French comet hunter Charles Messier foun ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 10 2014 - 6:28pm

How To Distinguish Venus-Like Planets From Possible Earths

Venus is uninhabitable for humans yet from a distance, using statistical wobbles, a Venus-like planet and an Earth-like planet are very similar. While the Earth has oceans of water and relatively moderate temperatures, Venus has no liquid water and exists ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 11 2014 - 10:23am

'Hot Jupiters' So Massive They Make Their Own Suns Wobble

“Hot Jupiters” are the term for large, gaseous exoplanets in other solar systems and a new study finds they make their suns wobble as they make their way through their orbit. Jupiters are a nice designation for a metric because it has a mass 1/1000th of t ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 15 2014 - 12:00pm

Tonight the Northern Lights may be visible possibly as far south as Maryland.

Tonight due to powerful X-class solar flares earlier this week we may get to see the Aurora Borealis at latitudes where it usually is not visible.    The Northern Lights are the result of charged particles from the Sun interacting with Earth's magneti ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Sep 13 2014 - 7:27pm

Human Moon Colony: Boldly Grow Where No Man Has Grown Before

Researchers planted 4,200 seeds in soils expected to mimic those in potential greenhouses on Mars and on the moon. Courtesy of Wieger Wamelink http://on.fb.me/1rYkF8p By Patricia Waldron, Inside Science (Inside Science)-- Any explorers visiting Mars and t ...

Article - Inside Science - Sep 15 2014 - 11:31am

Research Reveals Moon's Violent Volcanic Past

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Blog Post - Tomasz Nowakowski - Sep 16 2014 - 3:51am

M60-UCD1: Tiny Galaxy, Supermassive Black Hole

An ultracompact dwarf galaxy known as M60-UCD1 harbors a supermassive black hole – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive light-sucking object. The astronomers used the Gemini North 8-meter optical-and-infrared telescope on Hawaii's Maun ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 18 2014 - 10:11am

Miranda: Icy Moon Of Uranus Also Deformed By Tidal Heating

Miranda is a small, icy moon of Uranus and one of the most visually striking and enigmatic bodies in the solar system. Despite its relatively small size, Miranda appears to have experienced an episode of intense resurfacing that resulted in the formation ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 18 2014 - 4:49pm

BICEP2's vision wasn't that strong, Planck says their window was too dusty.

It seems that foreground galactic dust could be responsible for all of the signal observed by the BICEP2 team.  Two more shoes are waiting to drop.  Results of cross correlation and comparison of Planck data and BICEP2 data in the region BICEP2 was able to ...

Blog Post - Hontas Farmer - Sep 23 2014 - 8:11am