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In preparation for its final switch-off on 23 October, mission controllers today fired Planck's thrusters to empty its fuel tanks. The burn is one of the final steps to ensure that Planck ends its hugely successful mission in a permanently safe configuration.
Oct 21st, 2013
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ESA's billion-star surveyor Gaia will be launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou on 20 November to begin a five-year mission to map the stars with unprecedented precision.
Oct 21st, 2013
Read moreFor the threat of meteor strikes large or small, early detection is key, and evacuation may be the only defense needed within the next 1,000 years, according to an asteroid impact expert.
Oct 21st, 2013
Read moreSupermassive black holes: every large galaxy's got one. But how did they grow so big?
Oct 18th, 2013
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Using data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, an international team of astronomers has discovered a distant planetary system featuring multiple planets orbiting at a severe tilt to their host star.
Oct 17th, 2013
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Astronomers have found the most distant gravitational lens yet - a galaxy that, as predicted by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, deflects and intensifies the light of an even more distant object. The discovery provides a rare opportunity to directly measure the mass of a distant galaxy.
Oct 17th, 2013
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Earth's most eminent emissary to Mars has just proven that those rare Martian visitors that sometimes drop in on Earth -- a.k.a. Martian meteorites -- really are from the Red Planet. A key new measurement of Mars' atmosphere by NASA's Curiosity rover provides the most definitive evidence yet of the origins of Mars meteorites while at the same time providing a way to rule out Martian origins of other meteorites.
Oct 16th, 2013
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A team of researchers, including two Carnegie scientists, used a novel astronomical survey software system - the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory - to link a new stripped-envelope supernova, named iPTF13bvn, to the star from which it exploded, which is a first for this type of supernova, called Type Ib. The iPTF team also pinpointed the first afterglow of an explosion called a gamma-ray burst that was found by the Fermi satellite.
Oct 16th, 2013
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A team led by astronomers from Chalmers and Onsala Space Observatory have used the powerful telescope Alma to catch an unexpected glimpse of an extreme place in space: the base of a powerful jet close to a distant, hungry black hole.
Oct 16th, 2013
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An international team of astronomers has observed part of the final death throes of the largest known star in the Universe as it throws off its outer layers. The discovery, by a collaboration of scientists from the UK, Chile, Germany and the USA, is a vital step in understanding how massive stars return enriched material to the interstellar medium which is necessary for forming planetary systems.
Oct 16th, 2013
Read moreScientists found evidence that magnetic waves in a polar coronal hole contain enough energy to heat the corona and moreover that they also deposit most of their energy at sufficiently low heights for the heat to spread throughout the corona. The observations help to answer a 70-year-old solar physics conundrum about the unexplained extreme temperature of the Sun's corona - known as the coronal heating problem.
Oct 16th, 2013
Read moreThe University of Arkansas is one of 10 institutions selected by NASA to develop technology that will address technical needs and enable future missions of America's space program.
Oct 15th, 2013
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Ripped apart by tectonic forces, Hebes Chasma and its neighbouring network of canyons bear the scars of the Red Planet's early history.
Oct 11th, 2013
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Astronomers have found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained huge amounts of water orbiting an exhausted star, or white dwarf. This suggests that the star GD 61 and its planetary system - located about 150 light years away and at the end of its life - had the potential to contain Earth-like exoplanets, they say.
Oct 10th, 2013
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The beautiful, petal-like shells of galaxy PGC 6240 are captured in intricate detail by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, set against a sky full of distant background galaxies. This cosmic bloom is of great interest to astronomers due to both its uneven structure, and the unusual clusters of stars that orbit around it - two strong indications of a galactic merger in the recent past.
Oct 10th, 2013
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Two newly detected celestial objects without host star help astronomers in their understanding of star formation.
Oct 10th, 2013
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Lessons from underground nuclear tests and explosive volcanoes may hold the answer to how a category of unusual impact craters formed on Mars.
Oct 9th, 2013
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An alien world reported to be the first known planet to consist largely of diamond appears less likely to be of such precious nature, according to a new analysis.
Oct 9th, 2013
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