Space and astronomy news
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Get ready to rock as the week opens with the another stream of the Ophiuchid meteor shower and summer studies begin in the Milky Way. Venus teams with the crescent Moon and we’ll go globular as we head out to party under the stars, because….
Here’s what’s up!
Continue reading “What’s Up this Week – June 19-25, 2006”
A new study from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggests that galaxies form within clumps of dark matter. This mysterious substance emits no light, but it does have mass, so it can pull on matter with its gravity. Astronomers believe there’s 5 times as much dark matter in the Universe as regular matter. This new Spitzer survey found that the amount of dark matter surrounding distant galaxies is surprisingly consistent.
Continue reading “Dark Matter First, Then a Galaxy”
The newest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the turbulent region where two galaxies are merging together. The galactic collision is known as Arp 220, and it’s one of the nearest, brightest examples of this in the sky. Hubble’s keen vision has located more than 200 massive star clusters, the largest of which is twice as big as anything we have in the Milky Way. Arp 220 should continue producing new start clusters until it runs out of gas in about 40 million years.
Continue reading “Extreme Star Birth in Merging Galaxies”
An international team of astronomers have discovered a massive gas ball hurtling through a distant galaxy cluster. This ball of gas is traveling more than 750 km/second (466 miles/second) through galaxy cluster Abell 3266. The enormous speed and pressure has heated the gas up to the point that it blazes in the X-ray spectrum. The discovery was made using ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray satellite.
Continue reading “Gigantic Ball of Fire Discovered”
One of the biggest brightest clusters of stars in the sky is 47 Tucanae, located in the southern constellation of the Toucan. Located about 16,000 light years away, this globular cluster contains a million times the mass of our Sun, and measures 120 light years across. The stars in the cluster are so dense, they average only 1/10th a light year apart; approximately the size of the Solar System. This photograph was taken using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope.
Continue reading “Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae”
A pair of astronomers from the US and Italy have discovered a stream of stars moving through the sky at 230 km/second (500,000 mph). The stream has been found to extend 30,000 light years across the sky, but it could extend even further. The discoverers believe the stream is all the remains of a gigantic star cluster that was torn apart by the Milky Way’s gravity. If correct, there could be hundreds more of these streams circling our galaxy.
Continue reading “Highway of Stars in the Sky”
As early as 700 million years after the Big Bang, galaxies were already filled with cosmic dust. But where did it come from? There are two known sources of dust: old stars and supernovae. Astronomers studied nearby supernovae SN 2003gd using the Spitzer space telescope, and found that it had produced tremendous amounts of dust. Since there were many supernovae in the early Universe, they could be the source of all this dust.
Continue reading “Supernovae Generated the Universe’s Early Dust”
Approximately 2.3 billion years ago, bacterial life had generated enough oxygen to make the air breathable for larger creatures. Unfortunately, this was also a stage when our planet went through one of its “Snowball Earth” phases, when the entire planet was encased in kilometer-thick snow and ice. Scientists have found evidence that multi-celled eukaryotes – our distant ancestors – were thriving on Earth, before and after the big chill. While most of the planet was covered, there were probably pockets that were ice free, where islands of life could survive.
Continue reading “Ancient Life Survived Snowball Earth”
The Hubble Space Telescope captured this magnificent view of disk galaxy NGC 5866, seen nearly edge on from our vantage point. The galaxy’s dark dust lane is clearly visible, and it appears to be slightly warped, compared to the disk of starlight. This indicates that it probably brushed past another galaxy in the distant past. NGC 5866 is located in the constellation Draco, approximately 44 million light-years away; it’s similar in mass to the Milky Way, but only two-thirds the diameter.
Continue reading “Hubble View of NGC 5866”
Although our Solar System only contains a “regular Earth”, astronomers predict that other systems could contain “super Earths”; rocky planets with several times the mass of our planet. A new theory predicts that these planets should be most commonly found orbiting red dwarf stars. As red dwarf stars have less mass, they’re unable to hang onto the lighter gas that go onto form gas giants. The remaining heavier elements have time to form very massive terrestrial planets.
Continue reading “How Super Earths Might Form”