http://www.astronomy-blog.com/ New Article Alert From From Astronomy blog Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT en-us http://www.astronomy-blog.com/images/blogs/new-article-alert-51110.jpg http://www.astronomy-blog.com/ 128 96 http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/9-2008/the-thousand-ruby-galaxy.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/9-2008/the-thousand-ruby-galaxy.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT This dramatic image of the galaxy Messier 83 was captured by the Wide Field Imager at ESO's La Silla Observatory, located high in the dry desert mountains of the Chilean Atacama Desert. Messier 83 lies roughly 15 million light-years away towards the huge southern constellation of Hydra (the sea serpent). It stretches over 40 000 light-years, making it roughly 2.5 times smaller than our own Milky Way. However, in some respects, Messier 83 is quite similar to our own galaxy. Both the Milky Way and Messier 83 possess a bar across their galactic nucleus, the dense spherical conglomeration of stars seen at the centre of the galaxies........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2008/another-clue-to-dark-matter.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2008/another-clue-to-dark-matter.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT Another powerful collision of galaxy clusters has been captured with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble Space Telescope. Like its famous cousin, the so-called Bullet Cluster, this clash of clusters provides striking evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties. Like the Bullet Cluster, this newly studied cluster, officially known as MACS J0025.4-1222, shows a clear separation between dark and ordinary matter. This helps answer a crucial question about whether dark matter interacts with itself in ways other than via gravitational forces........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2008/collision-of-galaxy-clusters-captured.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2008/collision-of-galaxy-clusters-captured.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT Two UC Santa Barbara astronomers are part of a team that has made a stunning discovery using the Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, it was announced recently by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The capture of a collision of galaxy clusters was made by a team led by Marusa Bradac, a postdoctoral researcher and Hubble fellow in UCSB's Department of Physics. The international team also included Tommaso Treu, assistant professor of physics at UCSB........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/diverse-wet-environments-on-ancient-mars.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/diverse-wet-environments-on-ancient-mars.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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)........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/a-new-method-to-weigh-giant-black-holes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/a-new-method-to-weigh-giant-black-holes.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 first time, gives results that are consistent with a traditional technique........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/nano-sized-electronic-circuit-to-universe.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/nano-sized-electronic-circuit-to-universe.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/einsteins-theory-passes-strict-new-test.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/7-2008/einsteins-theory-passes-strict-new-test.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 double-star system unlike any other known in the Universe. The system is a pair of neutron stars, both of which are seen as pulsars that emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2008/newly-born-twin-stars-are-far-from-identical.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2008/newly-born-twin-stars-are-far-from-identical.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2008/making-a-giant-lunar-telescopes.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2008/making-a-giant-lunar-telescopes.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 Goddard and the Catholic University of America, which is located in Washington, D.C. "Since most of the materials are already there in the form of dust, you don't have to bring very much stuff with you, and that saves a ton of money."....... ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/the-little-man-and-the-cosmic-cauldron.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/the-little-man-and-the-cosmic-cauldron.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/seeking-answers-to-asteroid-deflection.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/seeking-answers-to-asteroid-deflection.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 Bong Wie, the Vance D. Coffman Chair Professor in Aerospace Engineering and director of the center. "However, it is now 2008, and there is no consensus on how to reliably deflect them in a timely manner," he noted........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/why-do-astronauts-suffer-from-space-sickness.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/why-do-astronauts-suffer-from-space-sickness.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 spatial orientation and require adaptation by a number of of the physiological processes in which our balance system plays a part. As long as this adaptation is incomplete, this can be coupled to motion sickness (nausea), visual illusions and disorientation........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/storm-winds-blow-in-jupiters-little-red-spot.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/storm-winds-blow-in-jupiters-little-red-spot.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 orbiting Earth, and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, perched on an Atacama Desert mountain in Chile. This is the first time that high resolution, close-up imaging of the Little Red Spot has been combined with powerful Earth-orbital and ground-based imagery made at ultraviolet through mid-infrared wavelengths........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/common-star-draws-swift-attention.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/common-star-draws-swift-attention.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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........ ]]> http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/dusty-galaxies.html http://www.astronomy-blog.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2008/dusty-galaxies.html Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:40:47 GMT 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 of mankind 300 times over. Even so, it now appears that from our vantage point we are only registering about half the total energy released by stars in our part of the universe; the other half is being absorbed by miniscule particles of dust floating in the vast expanses of interstellar space within galaxies. This is the conclusion reached by a team of astrophysicists from institutes around the world, including the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg. The results have implications for our understanding of the creation and evolution of galaxies through cosmic history (The Astrophysical Journal, 10 May 2008)........ ]]>