If you lived on one of Pluto's moons, you might have a hard time determining when, or from which direction, the sun will rise each day. Comprehensive analysis of data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows that two of Pluto's moons, Nix and Hydra, wobble unpredictably.
Jun 3rd, 2015
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A close-up of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by NASA's ultraviolet instrument surprised scientists by revealing that electrons close to the comet's surface - not photons from the Sun as had been believed - cause the rapid breakup of water and carbon dioxide molecules spewing from the surface.
Jun 2nd, 2015
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An international team of scientists used streams produced by dissolving globular clusters to measure the weight of our galaxy and determine the location of the sun within the Milky Way.
Jun 2nd, 2015
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By observing galaxies billions of light-years away, a team of astronomers has detected tube-like structures mere hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface.
Jun 1st, 2015
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Observations of 74 Earth-sized planets around distant stars may narrow field of habitable candidates.
Jun 1st, 2015
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An international team has discovered a young planetary system that shares remarkable similarities to our own early solar system. Their images reveal a ring-like disk of debris surrounding a Sun-like star, in a birth environment similar to the Sun's.
Jun 1st, 2015
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Large Hubble survey confirms link between mergers and supermassive black holes with relativistic jets.
May 28th, 2015
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How researchers listen for gravitational waves.
May 28th, 2015
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Using ever more energetic lasers, researchers have produced a record high number of electron-positron pairs, opening exciting opportunities to study extreme astrophysical processes, such as black holes and gamma-ray bursts.
May 27th, 2015
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Astronomers have discovered for the first time a rear-end collision between two high-speed knots of ejected matter from a supermassive black hole. This discovery was made while piecing together a time-lapse movie of a plasma jet blasted from a supermassive black hole inside a galaxy, located 260 million light-years from Earth.
May 27th, 2015
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Astronomers have discovered a disc of planetary debris surrounding a young sun-like star that shares remarkable similarities with the Kuiper Belt that lies beyond Neptune, and may aid in understanding how our solar system developed.
May 27th, 2015
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An international team of researchers has for the first time predicted the occurrence of aurorae visible to the naked eye on a planet other than Earth.
May 27th, 2015
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Great honour for Nicolas Thomas from the University of Berne: The scientist was selected as part of the imaging team for NASA's Europa Clipper mission. The mission will help to answer the question whether there is life in the oceans of Jupiter's moon, Europa.
May 27th, 2015
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In the brightest region of the nebula RCW 34, gas is heated and expands through the surrounding cooler gas. Once the heated hydrogen reaches the borders of the gas cloud, it bursts outwards into the vacuum like the contents of an uncorked champagne bottle - this process is referred to as champagne flow. But the young RCW 34 has more to offer; there seem to have been multiple episodes of star formation within the same cloud.
May 27th, 2015
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Supernovas just might be the maid service of the universe. It seems these explosions that mark the end of a star's life work hand-in-hand with supermassive black holes to sweep out gas and shut down galaxies' star-forming factories.
May 27th, 2015
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The research of magnetic, massive stars has uncovered questions concerning the behaviour of plasma within their magnetospheres.
May 26th, 2015
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