Space and astronomy news
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 …
Continue reading “Galaxy Orbiting Milky Way in the Wrong Direction”
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 …
Continue reading “Supermassive Black Holes Contribute to Galaxy Growth”
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 …
Continue reading “Puzzling Jets Seen Blasting Out from a Nebula”
Image credit: NASA NASA astronomers have discovered what they believe could be the third closest star to our own Sun. The star, now called SO25300.5+165258, is a faint red star estimated to be about 7.8 light years away in the constellation of Aries. This is just beyond Alpha Centauri (which is actually a group of …
Continue reading “Newly Discovered Star Could Be the Third Closest”
Image credit: Hubble A recent set of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope show a dull star that suddenly became 600,000 times brighter. The star, called V838 Monocerotis, is located 20,000 light-years from Earth and astronomers are unsure exactly why it flared up so brightly ? temporarily becoming the brightest star in the Milky …
Image credit: Subaru Telescope The Subaru telescope, based in Japan, has detected the most distant galaxy ever recorded at 12.8 billion light-years away. The Subaru Deep Field project team uncovered 70 candidate distant objects, by using a special filter which only allows light of a very specific wavelength to pass through – one that corresponds …