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amateur astronomers reported that a faint star in the constellation of Ophiuchus had suddenly become clearly visible in the night sky without the aid of a telescope. Records show that this so-called recurrent nova, RS Ophiuchi (RS Oph), has previously reached this level of brightness five times in the last 108 years, most recently in 1985. The latest explosion has been observed in unprecedented detail by an armada of space- and ground-based telescopes.

Speaking today (Friday) at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting at Leicester, Professor Mike Bode of Liverpool John Moores University and Dr Tim O'Brien of Jodrell Bank Observatory will present the latest results which are shedding new light on what happens when stars explode.

RS Oph is just over 5,000 light years away from Earth. It consists of a white dwarf star (the super-dense core of a star, about the size of the Earth, that has reached the end of its main hydrogen-burning phase of evolution and shed its outer layers) in close orbit with a much larger red giant star.

The two stars are so close together that hydrogen-rich gas from the outer layers of the red giant is continuously pulled onto the dwarf by its high gravity. After around 20 years, enough gas has been accreted that a runaway thermonuclear explosion occurs on the white dwarf's surface. In less than a day, its energy output increases to over 100,000 times that of the Sun, and the accreted gas (several times the mass of the Earth) is ejected into space at.

Diverse, Wet Environments on Ancient Mars

Mars once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life, as per two new studies based on data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and other instruments on board NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). "The big surprise from these new results is how pervasive and long-lasting Mars' water was, and how diverse the wet environments were," says........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/16/2008 7:54:58 PM)

Nano-sized Electronic Circuit To Universe

A newly developed nano-sized electronic device is an important step toward helping astronomers see invisible light dating from the creation of the universe. This invisible light makes up 98% of the light emitted since the "big bang," and may provide insights into the earliest stages of star and galaxy formation almost 14 billion years ago. The tiny, new circuit, developed by physicsts at Rutgers University, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/10/2008 8:20:19 PM)

Einstein's Theory Passes Strict, New Test

Taking advantage of a unique cosmic configuration, astronomers have measured an effect predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity in the extremely strong gravity of a pair of superdense neutron stars. Essentially, the famed physicist's 93-year-old theory passed yet another test. Researchers at McGill University used the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to do a four-year study of a........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/3/2008 9:21:17 PM)

Making A Giant Lunar Telescopes

Researchers working at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., have concocted an innovative recipe for giant telescope mirrors on the Moon. To make a mirror that dwarfs anything on Earth, just take a little bit of carbon, throw in some epoxy, and add lots of lunar dust. "We could make huge telescopes on the moon relatively easily, and avoid the large expense of transporting a large mirror from Earth," says Peter Chen of NASA........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 6/4/2008 10:41:57 PM)

Seeking Answers To Asteroid Deflection

An Asteroid Deflection Research Center (ADRC) has been established on the Iowa State campus to bring scientists from around the world to develop asteroid deflection technologies. The center was signed into effect in April by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost. "In the early part of 1990s, researchers around the world initiated studies to assess and devise methods to prevent near-Earth objects from striking Earth," said........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/27/2008 10:16:46 PM)

Common star draws swift attention with unprecedented flare

On April 25, one of our nearest stellar neighbors, a small, faint red dwarf known as EV Lacertae, unleashed the brightest flare ever detected from a normal star outside our solar system. The monster blast of radiation was picked up with NASA's Swift satellite, which scans space looking for Gamma-ray bursts coming from the edge of the universe. "The sheer magnitude of this stellar flare is unprecedented, and it was produced in our own........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/19/2008 8:21:55 PM)

Laser May Aid Searches for Earthlike Planets

Researchers at the University of Konstanz (Gera number of) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated an ultrafast laser that offers a record combination of high speed, short pulses and high average power. The new laser is expected to have a range of applications from gas sensors to communications, but in particular, say researchers, it could boost the sensitivity of astronomical tools searching for other........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/18/2008 10:01:30 PM)

Discovery of most recent supernova in our galaxy

The most recent supernova in our Galaxy has been discovered by tracking the rapid expansion of its remains. This result, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and NRAO's Very Large Array (VLA), has implications for understanding how often supernovas explode in the Milky Way galaxy. The supernova explosion occurred about 140 years ago, making it the most recent supernova in the Milky Way as measured in Earth's time frame. Previously, the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/14/2008 9:00:23 PM)

$34 Million For U.S. Environmental Satellite

A $34 million solar instrument package to be built by the University of Colorado at Boulder, considered a crucial tool to help monitor global climate change, has been restored to a U.S. government satellite mission slated for launch in 2013. The package will be built by CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics for the first flight of the National Polar Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, or NPOESS. The........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/13/2008 7:43:06 PM)

Catching a Glimpse of a Black Hole's Fury

Using the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and a host of international telescope partners, a team of scientists has made the clearest observation yet of innermost region of a black hole. From the observations, astronomers found good evidence that the enormous jets of particles emitted by supermassive black holes are corkscrewed in a way predicted by theory. The scientists believe the coiling is a result of........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/30/2008 6:46:05 PM)

Plethora Of Interacting Galaxies

Galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures, as 59 new images from the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope show. Interacting galaxies are found throughout the Universe, sometimes dramatic collisions that trigger bursts of star formation, on other occasions as stealthy mergers that form new galaxies. A series of 59 new images of colliding galaxies, the largest collection ever published simultaneously, has been........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/24/2008 10:19:04 PM)

Rocket Mystery Explained With New Imaging Technique

There's a strange wave phenomenon that's plagued rocket researchers for years, a lurking threat with the power to destroy an engine at almost any time. For decades, researchers have had a limited understanding of how or why it happens because they could not replicate or investigate the problem under controlled laboratory conditions. Researchers generally think that these powerful and unstable sound waves, created by energy supplied by the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/9/2008 10:02:03 PM)

Meteorites delivered the 'seeds' of Earth's left-hand life

Flash back three or four billion years Earth is a hot, dry and lifeless place. All is still. Without warning, a meteor slams into the desert plains at over ten thousand miles per hour. With it, this violent collision may have planted the chemical seeds of life on Earth. Researchers presented evidence today that desert heat, a little water, and meteorite impacts may have been enough to cook up one of the first prerequisites for life: The........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/6/2008 8:37:01 PM)

Europe's automated ship docks to the ISS

ATV Jules Verne, the European Space Agency's first resupply and reboost vehicle, has successfully performed a fully automated docking with the International Space Station (ISS). This docking marks the beginning of Jules Verne's main servicing mission to deliver cargo, propellant, water, oxygen and propulsion capacity to the Station, as well as ESA's entry into the restricted club of the partners able to access the orbital facility by their own........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/3/2008 9:11:49 PM)

A Planet in Progress?

Scientists are one more step closer to understanding how new planets form, thanks to research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and carried out by a team of astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. Ben R. Oppenheimer, assistant curator in the museum's Department of Astrophysics, and colleagues have used the Lyot Project coronograph attached to a U.S. Air Force telescope on Maui, Hawaii, to construct an image........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/1/2008 8:42:23 PM)

Newly discovered galaxy cluster

UC Irvine researchers have discovered a cluster of galaxies in a very early stage of formation that is 11.4 billion light years from Earth - the farthest of its kind ever to be detected. These galaxies are so distant that the universe was in its infancy when their light was emitted. The galaxy proto-cluster, named LBG-2377, is giving researchers an unprecedented look at galaxy formation and how the universe has evolved. Before this........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/31/2008 9:27:52 PM)

A Planet in Progress?

Icy Promethei Planum

Promethei Planum, an area seasonally covered with a more than 3500 m thick layer of ice in the martian south polar region, was the subject of the High Resolution Stereo Camera's focus on 22 September 2005 as Mars Express was in orbit above the Red Planet. Promethei Planum lies at approximately 76 degree south and 105 degree east on the Red Planet. The image data acquired in the region has a ground resolution of approximately 40 m/pixel. ........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/12/2008 9:49:53 PM)

First advert to be broadcast into space

The campaign to broadcast the first ever advert into space is launched today (Friday March 7)- with University of Leicester space researchers playing a key part in the process. The British public is being asked to shoot a 30-second ad about what they perceive life on earth to be as part of Doritos You Make It, We Play It user-generated-content campaign. The winning advert in the competition will be beamed past the earth's atmosphere, beyond........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/9/2008 5:31:46 PM)

The next-best thing to being on Mars

Last week, two MIT students began living, working and communicating with the outside world as if they were on a mission to Mars. Whenever they go outside their small, round habitat where eight people are spending a two-week "mission," they don spacesuits and pass through an airlock. When they send e-mail, it takes 20 minutes before the recipient can see it-the time it takes for radio waves to travel to and from the red planet. They're not........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/26/2008 10:27:07 PM)

Space tourism to rocket in this century

Seeking an out-of-this-world travel destination? Outer space will rocket into reality as "the" getaway of this century, as per scientists at the University of Delaware and the University of Rome La Sapienza. In fact, the "final frontier" could begin showing up in travel guides by 2010, they predict. "In the twenty-first century, space tourism could represent the most significant development experienced by the tourism industry," says........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/24/2008 9:57:37 PM)

Special Supernova Type Detected

Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, researchers have reported the possible detection of a binary star system that was later destroyed in a supernova explosion. The new method they used provides great future promise for finding the detailed origin of these important cosmic events. In an article appearing in the February 14th issue of the journal Nature, Rasmus Voss of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Gera........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/13/2008 9:34:33 PM)

A new method to weigh giant black holes

How do you weigh the biggest black holes in the universe? One answer now comes from a new and independent technique that UC Irvine researchers and other astronomers have developed using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, researchers have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/16/2008 7:40:30 PM)

Cern's Large Hadron Collider, a big bang

Now here''s a gadget. In fact not just a gadget, but arguably the gadget. It''s the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, scheduled to have its Grand Opening next month. Stephen Hawking explains what the LHC is for "It will smash particles together to recreate the moments after the big bang, producing a new golden age of discovery for physicists.........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/8/2008 4:42:03 PM)

Newly Born Twin Stars Are Far From Identical

Two stars, each with the same mass and in orbit around each other, are twins that one would expect to be identical. So astronomers were surprised when they discovered that twin stars in the Orion Nebula, a well-known stellar nursery 1,500 light years away, were not identical at all. In fact, these stars exhibited significant differences in brightness, surface temperature and possibly even size. The study, which is reported in the June 19........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 6/18/2008 8:51:55 PM)

The Little Man and the Cosmic Cauldron

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Very Large Telescope's First Light, ESO is releasing two stunning images of different kinds of nebulae, located towards the Carina constellation. The first one, Eta Carinae, has the shape of a 'little man' and surrounds a star doomed to explode within the next 100 000 years. The second image features a much larger nebula, whose internal turmoil is created by a cluster of young, massive stars. ........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/27/2008 10:19:10 PM)

Why do astronauts suffer from space sickness?

Rotating astronauts for a lengthy period provided researcher Suzanne Nooij with better insight into how 'space sickness' develops, the nausea and disorientation experienced by a number of astronauts. Nooij will receive her PhD from TU Delft on this subject on Tuesday 20 May. Gravity plays a major role in our spatial orientation. Changes in gravitational forces, such as the transition to weightlessness during a space voyage, influence our........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/21/2008 9:50:48 PM)

Storm Winds Blow in Jupiter's Little Red Spot

Using data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft and two telescopes at Earth, an international team of researchers has observed that one of the solar system's largest and newest storms - Jupiter's Little Red Spot - has some of the highest wind speeds ever detected on any planet. The New Horizons scientists combined observations from their Pluto-bound spacecraft, which flew past Jupiter in February 2007; data from the Hubble Space Telescope........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/21/2008 8:45:42 PM)

Dusty Galaxies

Anyone gazing up on a dark clear night is greeted by the spectacle of thousands of powerful fusion reactors - the stars. These balls of extremely hot gas are generating unimaginably large quantities of energy. Even the stars within a cube of "only" one light year on a side, taken at a random position in the universe, generate on average 40 quadrillion kilowatthours in one year. This would be enough to meet the current energy consumption needs........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/18/2008 10:13:30 PM)

'Super Road Maps' of Planets and Moons

Technology that could someday "MapQuest" Mars and other bodies in the solar system is under development at Rochester Institute of Technology's Rochester Imaging Detector Laboratory (RIDL), in collaboration with Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory. Three-Dimensional "super roadmaps" of other planets and moons would provide robots, astronauts and engineers details about atmospheric composition, biohazards, wind speed and........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/15/2008 8:29:42 PM)

New Type of Pulsating White Dwarf Star

University of Texas at Austin astronomers Michael H. Montgomery and Kurtis A. Williams, along with graduate student Steven DeGennaro, have predicted and confirmed the existence of a new type of variable star, with the help of the 2.1-meter Otto Struve Telescope at McDonald Observatory. The discovery is announced in today's issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the Delaware........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/7/2008 7:00:18 PM)

65-million-year-old asteroid impact

The asteroid presumed to have wiped out the dinosaurs struck the Earth with such force that carbon deep in the Earth's crust liquefied, rocketed skyward, and formed tiny airborne beads that blanketed the planet, say researchers from the U.S., U.K., Italy, and New Zealand in this month's Geology. The beads, known to geologists as carbon cenospheres, cannot be formed through the combustion of plant matter, contradicting a hypothesis that the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/5/2008 6:57:36 PM)

Stellar Ticking Time Bomb Explodes on Cue

Using observations from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE), an international team of astronomers has discovered a timing mechanism that allows them to predict exactly when a superdense star will unleash incredibly powerful explosions. "We found a clock that ticks slower and slower, and when it slows down too much, boom! The bomb explodes," says lead author Diego Altamirano of the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/30/2008 6:10:15 PM)

Size and Frequency of Meteorite Impacts

Researchers have developed a new way of determining the size and frequency of meteorites that have collided with Earth. Their work shows that the size of the meteorite that likely plummeted to Earth at the time of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary 65 million years ago was four to six kilometers in diameter. The meteorite was the trigger, researchers believe, for the mass extinction of dinosaurs and other life forms. François Paquay,........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/13/2008 9:10:24 PM)

Cosmic engines surprise XMM-Newton

XMM-Newton has been surprised by a rare type of galaxy, from which it has detected a higher number of X-rays than thought possible. The observation gives new insight into the powerful processes shaping galaxies during their formation and evolution. Researchers working with XMM-Newton were looking into the furthest reaches of the universe, at celestial objects called quasars. These are vast cosmic engines that pump energy into their........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/7/2008 10:47:59 PM)

Transatlantic research connection in astronomy

In the first project pursued under this agreement, the MPIfR will contribute $299,000 to upgrade the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array's (VLBA) capability to receive radio emissions at a frequency of 22 GHz. This improvement will enhance the VLBA's scientific productivity and will be especially important for cutting-edge research in cosmology and enigmatic cosmic objects such as gamma-ray blazars. "This agreement follows a number of........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/3/2008 9:38:30 PM)

The fickle moon, the inconstant moon

Lost in space..... While most debris from comets and meteorites that hit the moon is lost in space, if it finds its way into a "cold trap" on one of the poles of the moon, it remains there forever. In 1994, the Clementine polar-orbiting spacecraft used its radio transmitter to illuminate some of the moon's cold trap areas, which suggested the presence of lunar ice that may have resulted from a build up of water-bearing minerals from debris........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/3/2008 7:55:54 PM)

New Star Systems First of Their Kind

Scientists funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced recently in Astrophysical Journal Letters that they have discovered a faraway binary star system that could be the progenitor of a rare type of supernova. The two yellow stars, which orbit each other and even share a large amount of stellar material, resemble a peanut. The Ohio State University astronomers and their colleagues believe the two stars in the system, 13 million........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/1/2008 8:10:14 PM)

Eyes on the stars, even under cloudy skies

Graduate student Cristina Thomas has been making observations of asteroids using a large NASA telescope in Hawaii, at least once a month for more than three years now. Doing this kind of astronomical research has traditionally mandatory a lot of time and money for travel, but Thomas commonly can get to the telescope just by walking down the hall. Like dozens of students in Professor Richard Binzel's astronomy classes, Thomas gets to operate........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/20/2008 7:23:57 PM)

Novel spots found on Jupiter

Researchers have observed unexpected luminous spots on Jupiter caused by its moon Io. Besides displaying the most spectacular volcanic activity in the solar system, Io causes auroras on its mother planet that are similar to the Northern Lights on Earth. The auroral emissions associated with the volcanic moon are called the Io footprint. From prior studies, scientists had found the Io footprint to be a bright spot that is often followed by........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/17/2008 10:16:47 PM)

Seeing through the Dark

Astronomers have measured the distribution of mass inside a dark filament in a molecular cloud with an amazing level of detail and to great depth. The measurement is based on a new method that looks at the scattered near-infrared light or 'cloudshine' and was made with ESO's New Technology Telescope. Linked to the forthcoming VISTA telescope, this new technique will allow astronomers to better understand the cradles of newborn stars. The........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/9/2008 5:35:05 PM)

New discovery at Jupiter could help protect Earth-orbit satellites

Radio waves accelerate electrons within Jupiters magnetic field in the same way as they do on Earth, as per new research published in Nature Physics this week. The discovery overturns a theory that has held sway for more than a generation and has important implications for protecting Earth-orbiting satellites. Using data collected at Jupiter by the Galileo spacecraft, Dr Richard Horne of British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and his colleagues........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 3/9/2008 4:20:52 PM)

New Solar System Discovered

Harnessing Lawrence Livermore's pioneering work in gravitational microlensing, supercomputer modeling and adaptive optics, researchers have found two planets in a solar system much like our very own. A team of international researchers have discovered a solar system nearly 5,000 light years away that contains two scaled-down gas giant planets. They are about half the distance from their source star as Jupiter and Saturn are from our sun, but........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/14/2008 10:16:19 PM)

Jules Verne ATV launch

After the successful launch of ESA's Columbus laboratory aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis on Thursday (7 February), it is now time to focus on the next imminent milestone for ESA: the launch of Jules Verne, the first Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to be sent to the International Space Station. The 20-tonne European resupply and space-tug module will be carried into orbit by a special version of the Ariane 5 launch vehicle. The launcher,........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/11/2008 10:49:11 PM)

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