Space and astronomy news
Image credit: ESO Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory have discovered a star which is extremely flat All rotating objects in space are flattened due to their rotation; even our Earth is 21 kilometres wider at the equator than it is pole-to-pole. But this new star, called Achernar, is 50% wider at its equator than …
Image credit: ESO An international survey by the European Southern Observatory has uncovered more than 1000 luminous red variable stars in nearby galaxy Centaurus A (aka NGC 5128). This is the first survey that’s ever been performed on a galaxy outside our own Milky Way. These stars, known as Mira-variables, pulse in a very specific …
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Image credit: RAVE Researchers from 11 countries are working together to measure the motion and composition of 50 million stars in the Milky Way. This new survey is called RAVE (Radial Velocity Experiment), and astronomers will be able to use the data gathered to construct a very detailed history of our galaxy. They will be …
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Image credit: NRAO Gamma ray bursts (GRB) are the largest known explosions in the Universe; immensely powerful, quick to fade, but usually incredibly far away. Astronomers with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory got lucky, though, when they analyzed a recent GRB and discovered it was only 2.6 billion light-years away (most are usually 4 times …
Image credit: ESA Europe is ready to begin this summer’s invasion of Mars with the launch of its Mars Express spacecraft, due to lift off on June 2. The spacecraft is currently packed safely away on top a Soyuz-Fregat rocket at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. If all goes well, the rocket will lift off …
Image credit: NASA A team of astronomers have weighed a group of planets orbiting a pulsar by precisely measuring their orbits. So far, two of the system’s three planets have been weighed, and they’re 4.3 and 3.0 times the mass of the Earth. What’s unusual is that the spacing between the planets almost exactly match …
Image credit: NRAO Using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), astronomers have discovered a recently exploded supernova 140 million light years from Earth. The supernova is in a region where two galaxies are colliding together, and furiously forming new stars. The astronomers consider this super star cluster region a “supernova factory” because …
Image credit: NRAO Before this week, “Complex H” was thought to be a strange cloud of stars with an unusual trajectory near the Milky Way. But as it turns out, this object is actually a companion galaxy crashing into the outer reaches of our own galaxy in exactly the opposite direction of the Milky Way’s …
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Image credit: Chandra New images taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory show galaxies in an energetic phase in their development. Supermassive black holes at their centres are transferring a significant amount of energy into the gas surrounding the galaxies. Astronomers believe that this is just a stage in longer cycle where gas cools to form …
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Image credit: ESA Astronomers from the European Space Agency have uncovered a bizarre mystery. They?ve found strange jets emerging from a planetary nebula called Henize 3-1475. Even more unusual is the shape of the jets, which curve back on opposite sides like water coming from a rotating garden sprinkler. Their theory is that a large …
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