Space and astronomy news
Image credit: Hubble The most recent image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the delicate looking remnants from a supernova explosion in our nearest galaxy. The remnant, called LMC N 49, is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, and the supernova would have been visible several thousand years ago. At the core of the …
Continue reading “Sheets of Debris from a Supernova Explosion”
Image credit: PPARC A team of international astronomers have discovered a planet which is remarkably similar to Jupiter. This new planet circles a star called HD70642 (in the constellation of Puppis) 90 light-years from Earth. It’s twice the mass of Jupiter and its orbit is nearly circular around HD70642 at a distance similar to Jupiter’s …
Image credit: NSO A new adaptive optics system is helping the National Solar Observatory take much more vivid images of the Sun. Earth-based telescopes are limited in resolution by atmospheric distortion, so there was no real point of building them larger than 1.5 metres across – bigger didn’t help. With the new NSO system; however, …
Continue reading “Adaptive Optics Improve Images of the Sun”
Image credit: Hubble A new series of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope contain 25,000 galaxies, many of which are interacting and in the process of formation. Some of these galaxies are so far away, they’re seen when the Universe was only 2 billion years old. Astronomers are using Hubble and the Chandra X-Ray …
Interested in space and astronomy but you’ve never actually looked through a telescope? Until you’ve actually gone out and done some actual observing with your own two eyes, you won’t know what you’re missing. In this article, Fraser gives you a kick in the pants to get out there under the skies and start enjoying …
Continue reading “First Light: An Introduction to Stargazing”
Image credit: ESO A new series of photographs taken by the European Southern Observatory show a rare look into the very early stages of heavy star formation. This time in a star’s life is usually obscured from sight because of thick clouds of gas and dust, but in star cluster NGC 3603, the stellar wind …
Image credit: ESA Using the space-based XMM-Newton X-Ray observatory astronomers with the European Space Agency have made the first direct measurement of a neutron star’s magnetic field. A neutron star is a very dense object with the mass of a large star packed into a radius of only 20-30 km, and they were predicted to …
Continue reading “Neutron Star’s Magnetism Measured for the First Time”
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 …
Continue reading “Survey Finds 1000 Variable Stars in Nearby Galaxy”
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 …
Continue reading “Astronomers Begin a Massive Survey of the Milky Way”