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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.

Merging galaxies create a binary quasar

Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding super-massive black holes, and binary quasars are pairs of quasars bound together by gravity. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are believed to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies that are unambiguously in........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 2/3/2010 2:23:11 PM)

Differences between Ganymede and Callisto

Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states, as per research by researchers at the Southwest Research Institute appearing online in Nature Geoscience Jan. 24, 2010. Ganymede and Callisto are similar in size and are made of a similar mixture of ice and rock, but data from the Galileo and........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/25/2010 12:01:36 AM)

First Comprehensive Sky Map

Ever since NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, mission researchers released the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system's edge in particles, solar physicists have been busy revising their models to account for the discovery of a narrow "ribbon" of bright emission that was completely unexpected and not predicted by any model at the time. Further study by a team of researchers funded through NASA's Heliophysics Guest........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/13/2010 7:45:29 AM)

Fossil fireballs from supernovae

Studies of two supernova remnants using the Japan-U.S. Suzaku observatory have revealed never-before-seen embers of the high-temperature fireballs that immediately followed the explosions. Even after thousands of years, gas within these stellar wrecks retain the imprint of temperatures 10,000 times hotter than the sun's surface. "This is the first evidence of a new type of supernova remnant -- one that was heated right after the explosion,"........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/11/2010 8:04:15 AM)

New mathematical model for early universe

Researchers have made a number of discoveries about the origins of our 13 billion-year-old universe. But a number of scientific mysteries remain. What exactly happened during the Big Bang, when rapidly evolving physical processes set the stage for gases to form stars, planets and galaxies? Now astrophysicists using supercomputers to simulate the Big Bang have a new mathematical tool to unravel those mysteries, says Daniel R. Reynolds, assistant........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/6/2010 8:06:25 AM)

VISTA: Pioneering new survey telescope

VISTA is the latest telescope to be added to ESO's Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile. It is housed on the peak adjacent to the one hosting the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) and shares the same exceptional observing conditions. VISTA's main mirror is 4.1 metres across and is the most highly curved mirror of this size and quality ever made its deviations from a perfect surface are less than a few thousandths of the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 12/11/2009 7:53:36 AM)

Brightest-Ever Blazar Flare

A galaxy located billions of light-years away is commanding the attention of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and astronomers around the globe. Thanks to a series of flares that began September 15, the galaxy is now the brightest source in the gamma-ray sky -- more than ten times brighter than it was in the summer. Astronomers identify the object as 3C 454.3, an active galaxy located 7.2 billion light-years away in the constellation........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 12/9/2009 11:34:57 PM)

NRL's MISSE7 l

The Materials on the International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) 7, designed and built by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), launched aboard STS-129 on November, 16, for transport to the International Space Station. MISSE7 consists of two Passive Experiment Carriers (PEC7a and PEC7b) and three experiments mounted to the Express Pallet Assembly (ExPA). The individual experiments on MISSE7 include in situ monitoring of materials exposure,........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 12/8/2009 8:02:27 AM)

Hidden Details in the Birth of Super-Suns

The constellation of Orion is a hotbed of massive star formation, most prominently in the Great Nebula that sits in Orion's sword. The glowing gas of the Nebula is powered by a group of young massive stars, but behind it is a cluster of younger stars and clumps of gas. Still gathering together under gravity's pull, these gas clumps will eventually ignite into stars. The youthful cluster cannot be seen with traditional telescopes because of........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 11/17/2009 8:33:47 AM)

New Celestial Map Gives Directions for GPS

A number of of us have been rescued from unfamiliar territory by directions from a Global Positioning System (GPS) navigator. GPS satellites send signals to a receiver in your GPS navigator, which calculates your position based on the location of the satellites and your distance from them. The distance is determined by how long it took the signals from various satellites to reach your receiver. The system works well, and millions rely on it........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 10/29/2009 10:28:57 PM)

The female astronaut

In the early years of the "space race" (1957-1975) two men sought to test a scientifically simple yet culturally complicated theory: that women might be innately better suited for space travel than men. In 1960 the thought of a woman in space was a radical one, and justifiably so. On the ground 75% of American women did not work outside the home and females were banned from military flight service altogether. In marriage, wives were mandatory........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 10/6/2009 7:00:48 AM)

First Full Simulation of Star's Final Hours

The precise conditions inside a white dwarf star in the hours leading up to its explosive end as a Type Ia supernova are one of the mysteries confronting astrophysicists studying these massive stellar explosions. But now, a team of researchers, composed of three applied mathematicians at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and two astrophysicists, has created the first full-star simulation of the hours........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/23/2009 7:19:50 AM)

More to Solar Cycle than Sunspots

Challenging conventional wisdom, new research finds that the number of sunspots provides an incomplete measure of changes in the sun's impact on Earth over the course of the 11-year solar cycle. The study, led by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Michigan, finds that Earth was bombarded last year with high levels of solar energy at a time when the sun was in an uncommonly quiet phase and........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/20/2009 7:04:28 PM)

A peek at nest of black holes

Less than two months after they inaugurated the world's largest telescope, University of Florida astronomers have used one of the world's most advanced telescopic instruments to gather images of the heavens. A team led by astronomy professor Stephen Eikenberry late last week captured the first images of the cosmos ever made with a UF-designed and built camera/spectrometer affixed to the Gemini South telescope in Chile. The handful of "first........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/15/2009 2:27:10 PM)

Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4

Astronomers today declared the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory ready for a new decade of exploration, with the release of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. "This is one more important step in the confirmation of this wonderful mission. We Europeans are proud to be part of this and heartily congratulate the engineers, astronauts and researchers who got us to this point," said........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/10/2009 7:00:50 AM)

Understanding the Birth and Early Evolution of the Universe

A significant advance in our understanding of the early evolution of the universe has been achieved by a team of researchers linked to the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration. The team's results will appear in the 20 August 2009 issue of the journal Nature. The gravitational-wave scientists, including Lee Samuel Finn, a Penn State professor of physics and of........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 8/20/2009 7:06:54 AM)

Experts urge reformulation of US space policy

The Obama Administration has an opportunity to fundamentally reformulate United States space policies that are anchored in Cold War-era mindsets, as per the director of an American Academy of Arts and Sciences study. At a Capitol Hill briefing today in conjunction with the release of three new policy monographs, experts outlined the current state of U.S. and foreign space policy and encouraged the Administration to set a clear direction that........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/29/2009 11:06:23 PM)

GOES-14 satellite takes first full disk image

The latest Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-14, provided its first visible full disk image of Earth on July 27, at 2:00 p.m. EDT. The prime instrument on GOES, called the Imager, is taking images of Earth with a 1 kilometer (km) or 0.62 mile resolution from an altitude of 36,000 km (22,240 miles) above Earth's surface, equivalent to taking a picture of a dime from a distance of seven football fields. "The first GOES-14........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/28/2009 11:24:40 PM)

Jupiter pummeled, leaving a bruise

Something slammed into Jupiter in the last few days, creating a dark bruise about the size of the Pacific Ocean. The bruise was noticed by an amateur astronomer on Sunday, July 19. University of California, Berkeley, astronomer Paul Kalas took advantage of previously scheduled observing time on the Keck II telescope in Hawaii to image the blemish in the early morning hours of Monday, July 20. The near infrared image showed a bright spot in........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/21/2009 10:33:08 PM)

Meteorite grains divulge Earth's cosmic roots

The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, as per the University of Chicago postdoctoral scholar Philipp Heck and his international team. of colleagues. Heck and colleagues examined 22 interstellar grains from the Murchison meteorite for their analysis. Dying sun-like stars flung the Murchison grains into space more than 4.5. billion years ago,........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 6/16/2009 5:11:34 AM)

Victoria Crater unveils more of Mars' geologic past

After thoroughly investigating Victoria Crater on Mars for two years, the instruments aboard the Rover Opportunity reveal more evidence of our neighboring red planet's windy, wet and wild past. The overview of the findings compiled in one source is reported in the latest issue of the journal Science (May 22, 2009). Opportunity's two-year exploration of Victoria Crater a half-mile wide and 250 feet deep yielded a treasury of information........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/22/2009 5:23:28 AM)

We Owe It All to Comets

Comets have always fascinated us. A mysterious appearance could symbolize God's displeasure or mean a sure failure in battle, at least for one side. Now Tel Aviv University justifies our fascination - comets might have provided the elements for the emergence of life on our planet. While investigating the chemical make-up of comets, Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun of the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University found they........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/29/2009 5:19:56 AM)

Fermi Active Galaxies Ready for Their Close-Up

An international team of astronomers has used the world's biggest radio telescope to look deep into the brightest galaxies that NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope can see. The study solidifies the link between an active galaxy's gamma-ray emissions and its powerful radio-emitting jets. "Now we know for sure that the fastest, most compact, and brightest jets we see with radio telescopes are the ones that are able to kick light up to the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/23/2009 5:25:03 AM)

Student-built satellite

A tiny communications satellite designed and built by University of Colorado at Boulder undergraduates has been selected as one of three university research satellites to be launched into orbit in November as part of a NASA space education initiative. The three satellites, dubbed "CubeSats" because of their shape, were built by CU-Boulder, Montana State University and Kentucky Space, which is a consortium of state universities. CubeSats are........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/28/2010 12:19:23 AM)

New Research On Star Formation

"Crazy" and "cool" are two of the words Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue uses to describe the two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is thought to beforming stars where few stars have been formed before. Donahue was part of an international team of astronomers that viewed the gas tail with a very long, new observation made by the Chandra X-ray Observatory and detailed it in a paper published this month in the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/25/2010 8:15:01 AM)

Meteorite hits doctor's office

Of course, it happened with a doctor’s office, what else? An excerpt from the Washington Post report........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/24/2010 11:36:47 PM)

Galactic GPS

Radio astronomers have uncovered 17 millisecond pulsars in our galaxy by studying unknown high-energy sources detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. The astronomers made the discovery in less than three months. Such a jump in the pace of locating these hard-to-find objects holds the promise of using them as a kind of "galactic GPS" to detect gravitational waves passing near Earth. A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/6/2010 8:15:12 AM)

A Sun Glint on Earth

n two new videos from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft, bright flashes of light known as sun glints act as beacons signaling large bodies of water on Earth. These observations give scientists a way to pick out planets beyond our solar system (extrasolar planets) that are likely to have expanses of liquid, and so stand a better chance of having life. These sun glints are like sunshine glancing off the hood of a car. We can see them reflecting........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 1/6/2010 8:12:23 AM)

Fog on Titan

Saturn's largest moon, Titan, looks to be the only place in the solar systemaside from our home planet, Earthwith copious quantities of liquid (largely, liquid methane and ethane) sitting on its surface. As per planetary astronomer Mike Brown of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Earth and Titan share yet another feature, which is inextricably linked with that surface liquid: common fog. The presence of fog provides the first........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 12/18/2009 6:59:41 PM)

Super-massive black holes

An international team of researchers has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their findings appear in December's first issue of the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics These super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies are called active galactic nuclei. For the first time, the team observed a quasar with an active galactic........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 12/10/2009 10:29:56 PM)

About first black holes

The first large black holes in the universe likely formed and grew deep inside gigantic, starlike cocoons that smothered their powerful x-ray radiation and prevented surrounding gases from being blown away, says a newly released study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder. The formation process involved two stages, said Mitchell Begelman, a professor and the chair of CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department. The........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 11/25/2009 8:17:32 AM)

Light On Longstanding Cosmic Mystery

An international collaboration that includes researchers from the University of Delaware's Bartol Research Institute in the Department of Physics and Astronomy has discovered very-high-energy gamma rays in the Cigar Galaxy (M82), a bright galaxy filled with exploding stars 12 million light years from Earth. The gamma rays observed by the team have energies more than a trillion times higher than the energy of visible light and are the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 11/2/2009 11:09:49 PM)

The Milky Way's tiny neighbor

In the new ESO image, Barnard's Galaxy glows beneath a sea of foreground stars in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). At the relatively close distance of about 1.6 million light-years, Barnard's Galaxy is a member of the Local Group (ESO 11/96), the archipelago of galaxies that includes our home, the Milky Way. The nickname of NGC 6822 comes from its discoverer, the American astronomer Edward Emerson Barnard, who........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 10/14/2009 7:08:00 AM)

New aluminum-water rocket propellant

Scientists are in the process of developing a new type of rocket propellant made of a frozen mixture of water and "nanoscale aluminum" powder that is more environmentally friendly than conventional propellants and could be manufactured on the moon, Mars and other water-bearing bodies. The aluminum-ice, or ALICE, propellant might be used to launch rockets into orbit and for long-distance space missions and also to generate hydrogen for fuel........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 10/7/2009 8:44:20 PM)

Cosmic Rays Hit Space Age High

Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. As per sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high. "In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/30/2009 6:46:40 AM)

Whole New Way Of Seeing The Moon

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), an unmanned mission to comprehensively map the entire moon, has returned its first data. One of the seven instruments aboard, the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment, is making the first global survey of the temperature of the lunar surface while the spacecraft orbits some 31 miles above the moon. Diviner has obtained enough data already to characterize a number of aspects of the moon's current........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/17/2009 11:50:13 PM)

James Webb Space Telescope Begins to Take Shape

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is starting to come together. A major component of the telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module structure, recently arrived at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for testing in the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility. The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, is an important component of the Webb telescope. The ISIM includes the structure, four........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 9/15/2009 9:48:39 PM)

Is The Milky Way Doomed To Be Destroyed? Probably Not

As researchers attempt to learn more about how galaxies evolve, an open question has been whether collisions with our dwarf galactic neighbors will one day tear apart the disk of the Milky Way. That grisly fate is unlikely, a newly released study now suggests. While astronomers know that such collisions have probably occurred in the past, the new computer simulations show that instead of destroying a galaxy, these collisions "puff up" a........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 8/31/2009 10:04:42 PM)

Outsized Heat of Sun's Atmosphere

"Why is the sun's corona so darned hot?" asks James Klimchuk, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center's Solar Physics Laboratory in Greenbelt, Md. The mystery of why temperatures in the solar corona, the sun's outer atmosphere, soar to several million degrees Kelvin (K) -much hotter than temperatures nearer the sun's surface-has puzzled researchers for decades. New observations made with instruments aboard Japan's Hinode........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 8/16/2009 9:58:15 PM)

Storm clouds over Titan

Taking advantage of advanced techniques to correct distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, astronomers used the NSF-supported Gemini Observatory to capture the first images of clouds over the tropics of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The images clarify a long-standing mystery linking Titan's weather and surface features, helping astronomers better understand the moon of Saturn, viewed by some researchers as an analog to Earth when our........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 8/13/2009 7:08:46 AM)

Rare 'Green Pea' galaxies

A team of astronomers has discovered a group of rare galaxies called the "Green Peas" with the help of citizen researchers working through an online project called Galaxy Zoo. The finding could lend unique insights into how galaxies form stars in the early universe. The Galaxy Zoo users, who volunteer their spare time to help classify galaxies in an online image bank, came across many objects that stuck out because of their small size and........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/27/2009 11:10:23 PM)

LRO's First Moon Images

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft's two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds). As the moon rotates beneath LRO, LROC gradually will build up photographic maps of the........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/4/2009 10:55:02 PM)

New focus on the moon

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) has taken and received its first images of the Moon, kicking off the year-long mapping mission of Earth's nearest celestial neighbor. The LROC imaging system, under the watchful eyes of Arizona State University professor Mark Robison, the principal investigator, consists of two Narrow Angle Cameras (NACs) to provide high-resolution black-and-white images, a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) to provide........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 7/2/2009 10:08:14 PM)

Planet-forming disk orbiting twin suns

Astronomers are announcing today that a sequence of images collected with the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) clearly reveals the presence of a rotating molecular disk orbiting the young binary star system V4046 Sagittarii. The SMA images provide an uncommonly vivid snapshot of the process of formation of giant planets, comets, and Pluto-like bodies. The results also confirm that such objects may just as easily form around double stars........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 6/10/2009 9:37:52 PM)

Hubble repair mission carrying $70 million instrument

A $70 million instrument designed by the University of Colorado at Boulder to probe the evolution of galaxies, stars and intergalactic matter from its perch on the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope is on schedule for its slated May 11 launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard NASA's space shuttle Atlantis. Originally scheduled for launch in 2004, NASA's Hubble Servicing mission has been beset by delays over the years by causes ranging........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 5/7/2009 10:10:29 PM)

Challenge To Galaxy Formation Theories

A team led by an Indiana University astronomer has found a sample of massive galaxies with properties that suggest they may have formed relatively recently. This would run counter to the widely-held belief that massive, luminous galaxies (like our own Milky Way Galaxy) began their formation and evolution shortly after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago. Further research into the nature of these objects could open new windows into the study........Go to the Astronomy-blog (Added on 4/13/2009 2:03:31 PM)

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