Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Birth of a star quartet

An international team of researchers has discovered something extraordinary in space: a new star system forming from parts of a filamentary gas cloud.

February 12, 2015 Read more

From space junk to asteroids, Dark Energy Camera unveils small objects in our solar system

The Dark Energy Camera, or DECam, peers deep into space from its mount on the 4-meter Victor Blanco Telescope high in the Chilean Andes.

February 12, 2015 Read more

VLA finds unexpected 'storm' at galaxy's core

Supermassive black hole blasting gas, transforming galaxy.

February 11, 2015 Read more

Planck reveals the dynamic side of the Universe

The Planck collaboration has today released data from four years of observation by the European Space Agency's Planck spacecraft. The aim of the Planck mission is to study the Cosmic Microwave Background, the light left over from the Big Bang.

February 11, 2015 Read more

Worms in space: Exploring health effects of microgravity

Can astronauts who spend time in space pass an epigenetic memory of microgravity to their future children? Researchers are hoping experiments with C. elegans can address how human biology reacts when exposed to changes in gravity.

February 10, 2015 Read more

Stellar partnership doomed to end in catastrophe

First pair of merging stars destined to become supernova found.

February 9, 2015 Read more

Dark matter at the heart of our Galaxy

The Universe is pervaded by a mysterious form of matter, dubbed dark matter, about five times more abundant than the ordinary matter we are familiar with. Its existence in galaxies was robustly established in the 1970s. Scientists now obtained for the first time a direct observational proof of the presence of dark matter in the innermost part our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

February 9, 2015 Read more

Planck reveals first stars were born late

New maps from the Planck satellite uncover the 'polarised' light from the early Universe across the entire sky, revealing that the first stars formed much later than previously thought.

February 8, 2015 Read more

Lifting the veil on a dark galaxy

A cluster of young, pulsating stars discovered in the far side of the Milky Way may mark the location of a previously unseen dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxy hidden behind clouds of dust.

February 8, 2015 Read more

Still doubts on gravitational waves

In March last year the BICEP2 team claimed to have observed, for the first time, the effects of gravitational waves in cosmic background radiation. In September Planck demonstrated that the signal observed might be the result of 'contaminants' due to the polarized radiation produced by our Galaxy. A new paper confirms the Planck observation: even following a more accurate analysis (and the adoption of new instruments) there is still evidence of contaminants.

February 2, 2015 Read more

How spaceflight ages the immune system prematurely

New research suggests that a ground-based model simulating some of the effects of spaceflight on mice induces changes in B lymphocyte production in bone marrow.

February 2, 2015 Read more

'Live fast, die young' galaxies lose the gas that keeps them alive

Galaxies can die early because the gas they need to make new stars is suddenly ejected, research published today suggests. Most galaxies age slowly as they run out of raw materials needed for growth over billions of years. But a pilot study looking at galaxies that die young has found some might shoot out this gas early on, causing them to redden and kick the bucket prematurely.

February 2, 2015 Read more

CAT scan of nearby supernova remnant reveals frothy interior

Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, is one of the most well studied supernova remnants in our galaxy. But it still holds major surprises. Astronomers have generated a new 3-D map of its interior using the astronomical equivalent of a CAT scan. They found that the Cas A supernova remnant is composed of a collection of about a half dozen massive cavities - or 'bubbles'.

January 29, 2015 Read more

Some potentially habitable planets began as gaseous, Neptune-like worlds

Two phenomena known to inhibit the potential habitability of planets - tidal forces and vigorous stellar activity - might instead help chances for life on certain planets orbiting low-mass stars, astronomers have found.

January 28, 2015 Read more

Rosetta's profile of a comet

Measurement results from ESA's space probe provide a comprehensive picture of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

January 28, 2015 Read more

The two faces of Mars

The two hemispheres of Mars are more different from any other planet in our solar system. Non-volcanic, flat lowlands characterise the northern hemisphere, while highlands punctuated by countless volcanoes extend across the southern hemisphere. Although theories and assumptions about the origin of this so-called and often-discussed Mars dichotomy abound, there are very few definitive answers. Geophysicists are now providing a new explanation.

January 28, 2015 Read more

A new instrument to study the extreme universe - the X-Ray polarimeter X-Calibur

The astrophysics research group at Washington University in St.Louis built an instrument that is capable to measure the polarization properties of X-rays. This instrument, once flown in space, can be used in a novel approach to study the most extreme objects in the Universe, such as black holes and neutron stars.

January 28, 2015 Read more

The mouth of the beast

Like the gaping mouth of a gigantic celestial creature, the cometary globule CG4 glows menacingly in this new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope. Although it appears to be big and bright in this picture, this is actually a faint nebula, which makes it very hard for amateur astronomers to spot. The exact nature of CG4 remains a mystery.

January 28, 2015 Read more