Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Rosetta: The dark side of the comet

Light scattered from dust particles allows a first glance at the side of comet 67P that has been trapped in the darkness of polar night for the last months.

November 7, 2014 Read more

Lightning flashes from a black hole

MAGIC telescopes observe an extremely short, powerful outburst of radiation in Galaxy IC 310.

November 7, 2014 Read more

Rocket experiment finds the Universe brighter than expected (w/video)

A sounding rocket experiment has detected a surprising surplus of infrared light in the dark space between galaxies, a diffuse cosmic glow as bright as all known galaxies combined. The glow is thought to be from orphaned stars flung out of galaxies.

November 7, 2014 Read more

Hubble surveys debris-strewn exoplanetary construction yards

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have completed the largest and most sensitive visible-light imaging survey of dusty debris disks around other stars. These dusty disks, likely created by collisions between leftover objects from planet formation, were imaged around stars as young as 10 million years old and as mature as more than 1 billion years old.

November 6, 2014 Read more

Sustainability, astrobiology illuminate future of life in universe, civilization on Earth

Two astrophysicists argue that questions about the future of life on Earth and beyond may soon be resolvable scientifically, thanks to new data about the Earth and about other planets in our galaxy, and by combining the earth-based science of sustainability with the space-oriented field of astrobiology.

November 6, 2014 Read more

Revolutionary ALMA image reveals planetary genesis

For ALMA's first observations in its new and most powerful mode, researchers pointed the antennas at HL Tauri - a young star, about 450 light-years away, which is surrounded by a dusty disc. The resulting image exceeds all expectations and reveals unexpectedly fine detail in the disc of material left over from star birth.

November 6, 2014 Read more

Dark matter may be massive

Instead of WIMPS or axions, dark matter may be made of macroscopic objects as small as a few ounces up to the size of a good asteroid, and probably as dense as a neutron star or the nucleus of an atom.

November 4, 2014 Read more

How a giant impact formed asteroid Vesta's 'belt' (w/video)

Collisions of heavenly bodies generate almost unimaginable levels of energy. Researchers at Brown University used NASA's ultra-high-speed cannon and computer models to simulate such a collision on Vesta, the second-largest object in the asteroid belt. Their analysis of the images - taken at a million frames per second - shows how Vesta may have gotten the deep grooves that encircle its midsection.

November 4, 2014 Read more

Astronomers solve puzzle about bizarre object at the center of our galaxy

The mystery about a thin, bizarre object in the center of the Milky Way that some astronomers believe to be a hydrogen gas cloud headed toward our galaxy's enormous black hole has been solved by UCLA astronomers.

November 4, 2014 Read more

Investigating a triple star system in formation

An international team of astronomers has carried out the most accurate study so far of the cocoon of gas and dust surrounding the GG Tau A system. By combining complementary observations at submillimeter (ALMA and IRAM) wavelengths with those at infrared (VLTI/ESO) wavelengths, the researchers were able to identify the complex dynamics at work in GG Tau.

November 3, 2014 Read more

VLTI detects exozodiacal light

A team of astronomers observed 92 nearby stars to probe exozodiacal light from hot dust close to their habitable zones and combined the new data with earlier observations.

November 3, 2014 Read more

Universe may face a darker future

New research offers a novel insight into the nature of dark matter and dark energy and what the future of our Universe might be.

October 31, 2014 Read more

Hubble sees 'ghost light' from dead galaxies

The Hubble Space Telescope has picked up the faint, ghostly glow of stars ejected from ancient galaxies that were gravitationally ripped apart several billion years ago. The mayhem happened 4 billion light-years away, inside an immense collection of nearly 500 galaxies nicknamed 'Pandora's Cluster', also known as Abell 2744

October 31, 2014 Read more

Asteroid redirection

Better options available in thousands of near-Earth asteroids, expert says.

October 31, 2014 Read more

When did galaxies settle down?

Astronomers have long sought to understand exactly how the universe evolved from its earliest history to the cosmos we see around us in the present day. In particular, the way that galaxies form and develop is still a matter for debate. Now a group of researchers have used the collective efforts of the hundreds of thousands of people that volunteer for the Galaxy Zoo project to shed some light on this problem.

October 30, 2014 Read more

Planet-forming lifeline discovered in a binary star system

Astronomers have detected a streamer of dust and gas flowing from a massive outer disk toward the inner reaches of a binary star system. This never-before-seen feature may be responsible for sustaining a second, smaller disk of planet-forming material that otherwise would have disappeared long ago.

October 29, 2014 Read more

Planck 2013 results

Astronomy and Astrophysics is publishing a special feature of 31 articles describing the data gathered by Planck over 15 months of observations and released by ESA and the Planck Collaboration in March 2013. This series of papers presents the initial scientific results extracted from this first Planck dataset.

October 29, 2014 Read more

Laser experiments mimic cosmic explosions and planetary cores

Researchers are finding ways to understand some of the mysteries of space without leaving earth. Using high-intensity lasers focused on targets smaller than a pencil's eraser, they conducted experiments to create colliding jets of plasma knotted by plasma filaments and self-generated magnetic fields, reaching pressures a billion times higher than seen on earth.

October 28, 2014 Read more