Space and astronomy news
Image credit: Hubble Although stars can burn for billions of years, their final stages can take a relatively short period of time. In many cases, it only takes a few hundred thousand years for dying stars to slough off their outer layers to create the familiar planetary nebula. Since they happen so quickly, they’re relatively …
Image credit: ESA Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin believe they’ve figured out an inexpensive way to search for extrasolar planets. After stars like our own Sun use up their fuel they eventually turn into red giant stars, and then shrink again to become white dwarfs. Although the process will likely destroy the …
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Image credit: Hubble Astronomers have known for nearly a century that galaxies are distinct islands of stars, floating apart from each other in space. But it turns out that galaxies are more connected than previously believed because of large-scale “galactic winds” which blow off of galaxies and interact with each other. Researchers from the University …
Image credit: Hubble Three of the Universe’s largest explosions: gamma-ray bursts, X-ray flashes, and supernovae could actually come from the same event – the collapse of a supermassive star. An astronomer from Caltech has found that the different kinds of explosions seem to contain the same amount of energy, they’re just divided up differently between …
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Image credit: ESA The European Space Agency’s mission to Mars, Mars Express, is right on schedule to arrive at the Red Planet on December 25, 2003. The British-built Beagle 2 lander will also reach Mars the same day, but it will be released from Mars Express on December 19. Beagle 2 doesn’t have any propulsion …
Image credit: UA Astronomers from the University of Arizona have used a new technique called “nulling interferometry” to reveal the planetary disk around a newly-forming star. Incredibly, they discovered a gap in the disk, where a Jupiter-like planet is probably forming. This nulling technique works by combining the light from the central star in such …
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Image credit: NASA The Leonid meteor shower will be making an appearance on November 17, 2003, and it might be an impressive show. These meteors are the minute dust trails of Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle which flash in the sky as they strike the Earth’s atmosphere. In past years, the Leonids have been very impressive, sometimes thousands …
Image credit: UA The construction of the world’s most powerful optical telescope took a significant step forward this week when the first of its huge mirrors was delivered. The Mount Graham International Observatory’s Large Binocular Telescope will eventually have twin 8.4 metre mirrors linked together, giving it an effective size of 11.8 metres. But the …
Image credit: UH IfA Astronomers from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy released new images from their brand new 16-megapixel camera installed on the 2.2 metre telescope on Mauna Kea. This new camera provides a tremendous increase in resolution over the 1-megapixel camera the telescope was using before, and makes this telescope one of …
Image credit: ESO The European Southern Observatory has released new images of nebula N44 in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Astronomers used the ESO’s Wide-Field-Imager on the 2.2 metre La Silla Observatory to capture the area with unprecedented clarity. N44 is approximately 1,000 light-years across and contains about 40 bright luminous blue stars. The blue stars …