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Astronomers have gathered the most detailed observations ever into the surroundings of the supermassive black hole at the centre of an active galaxy, and made a surprising discovery: dust is being propelled into space in a ring-shaped disk.
Jun 27th, 2013
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A team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics conducted the most expensive and most elaborate computer simulations so far to study the formation of neutron stars at the center of collapsing stars with unprecedented accuracy.
Jun 27th, 2013
Read moreThe University of Colorado Boulder has become a full institutional member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV, an ambitious effort by some of the world's top astronomers to map the celestial sky in three dimensions to learn more about the structure and evolution of the universe.
Jun 26th, 2013
Read moreAll stars begin their lives in groups. Most stars are born in small groups that quickly fall apart. Others form in huge, dense swarms, where stars jostle with thousands of neighbors while strong radiation and harsh stellar winds scour interstellar space, stripping planet-forming materials from nearby stars. It would thus seem an unlikely place to find alien worlds. Yet 3,000 light-years from Earth, in the star cluster NGC 6811, astronomers have found two planets smaller than Neptune orbiting sun-like stars.
Jun 26th, 2013
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A team of astronomers has combined new observations of Gliese 667C with existing data from HARPS at ESO's 3.6-meter telescope in Chile, to reveal a system with at least six planets. A record-breaking three of these planets are super-Earths lying in the zone around the star where liquid water could exist, making them possible candidates for the presence of life. This is the first system found with a fully packed habitable zone.
Jun 25th, 2013
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We now understand the nature of the giant storms on Saturn. Through the analysis of images sent from the Cassini space probe belonging to the North American and European space agencies (NASA and ESA respectively), as well as the computer models of the storms and the examination of the clouds therein, the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country has managed to explain the behaviour of these storms for the very first time.
Jun 24th, 2013
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A CSIRO radio telescope has detected the raw material for making the first stars in galaxies that formed when the Universe was just three billion years old - less than a quarter of its current age. This opens the way to studying how these early galaxies make their first stars.
Jun 24th, 2013
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On June 7, 2011, our sun erupted, blasting tons of hot plasma into space. Some of that plasma splashed back down onto the sun's surface, sparking bright flashes of ultraviolet light. This dramatic event may provide new insights into how young stars grow by sucking up nearby gas.
Jun 20th, 2013
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When two galaxies stray too close to each other they begin to interact, causing spectacular changes in both objects. In some cases the two can merge - but in others, they are ripped apart.
Jun 20th, 2013
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New observations of a nearby active galaxy called NGC 3783, harnessing the power of the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile, have given a team of astronomers a surprise. Although the hot dust - at some 700 to 1000 degrees Celsius - is indeed in a torus as expected, they found huge amounts of cooler dust above and below this main torus.
Jun 20th, 2013
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Using data gathered by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, scientists believe they have solved a mystery from one of the solar system's coldest regions - a permanently shadowed crater on the moon.
Jun 19th, 2013
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Supernova 2011fe was discovered just hours after it exploded in the Big Dipper. Studies by the Nearby Supernova Factory of its spectrum as it evolved over time have produced a benchmark atlas of data by which to measure all future Type Ia's.
Jun 19th, 2013
Read moreNASA announced Tuesday a Grand Challenge focused on finding all asteroid threats to human populations and knowing what to do about them.
Jun 18th, 2013
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The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft is on track for a launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on June 26. IRIS will fill a crucial gap in the ability of scientists to advance Sun-Earth connection studies by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through a dynamic interface region - the chromosphere and transition region - between the solar surface and the solar corona.
Jun 18th, 2013
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Astrophysicists from the Complutense University of Madrid have confirmed that Crantor, a large asteroid with a diameter of 70 km has an orbit similar to that of Uranus and takes the same amount of time to orbit the Sun. Researchers have demonstrated for the first time that this and a further two objects of the group of the Centaurs are co-orbital with Uranus.
Jun 18th, 2013
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ESA's mission to Mars in 2016 has entered the final stage of construction with the signature of a contract today with Thales Alenia Space at the Paris Air and Space Show.
Jun 17th, 2013
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A new study by astronomers at NASA, Johns Hopkins University and Rochester Institute of Technology confirms long-held suspicions about how stellar-mass black holes produce their highest-energy light.
Jun 14th, 2013
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The keen vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has detected a mysterious gap in a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust swirling around the nearby star TW Hydrae, located 176 light-years away in the constellation Hydra. The gap's presence is best explained as due to the effects of a growing, unseen planet that is gravitationally sweeping up material and carving out a lane in the disk, like a snow plow.
Jun 13th, 2013
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