News (Page 667)

In theoretical research that could explain everything from planet formation to outflows from stars, to even the settling of volcanic ash, Caltech researchers have discovered a new mechanism to explain how the act of dust moving through gas leads to clumps of dust. While dust clumps were already known to play a role in seeding new planets and many other systems in space and on Earth, how the clumps formed was unknown until now. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Australian researchers using a CSIRO radio telescope in Western Australia have nearly doubled the known number of ‘fast radio bursts’— powerful flashes of radio waves from deep space. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

A bright new star appeared in the sky in June, 1670. It was seen by the Carthusian monk Père Dom Anthelme in Dijon, France, and astronomer Johannes Hevelius in Gdansk, Poland. Over the next few months, it slowly faded to invisibility. But in March 1671, it reappeared – now even more luminous and among the 100 brightest stars in the sky. Again it faded, and by the end of the summer it was gone. Then in 1672, it put in a third appearance, now only barely visible to the naked eye. After a few months it was gone again and hasn’t been seen since. PoweredRead More →

On Wednesday, 10 October 2018, more than 200 guests from around the world gathered on the northern array site of the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) to celebrate the inauguration of the first prototype Large-Sized Telescope (LST). The telescope, named LST-1, is intended to become the first of four LSTs of the north site of the CTA Observatory, which is located on the existing site of the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias’ (IAC’s) Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos located in the municipality of Villa de Garafia on the island of La Palma. The plan for the site also includes 15 Medium-Sized Telescopes (MSTs). Powered byRead More →

More than 30,000 celestial images that were all but lost to science are about to find their way back into researchers’ hands thanks to the efforts of thousands of citizen scientists. The photographs, radio maps, and other telescopic images were scanned from the pages of dusty old journals for a cosmic reclamation project called Astronomy Rewind. Its goal is to bring these “zombie” images back to life so that astronomers can find them online and compare them with modern electronic data from ground- and space-based telescopes, making possible new studies of short- and long-term changes in the heavens. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Astronomers from Lund University in Sweden have now found the explanation to a recent mystery at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy: the high levels of scandium discovered last spring near the galaxy’s giant black hole were in fact an optical illusion. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

UZH researchers have analyzed the composition and structure of faraway exoplanets using statistical tools. Their analysis indicates whether a planet is Earth-like, made up of pure rock, or a water-world. The larger the planet, the more hydrogen and helium surround it. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Astrophysicists Mattia Galiazzo and Rudolf Dvorak from the University of Vienna, in collaboration with Elizabeth A. Silber (Brown University, U.S.) investigated the long-term path development of centaurs, solar system minor bodies that originally have orbits between Jupiter and Neptune. The researchers have estimated the number of close encounters and impacts with the terrestrial planets after the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment about 3.8 billion years ago, as well as the possible sizes of craters that occur after a collision with the Earth and the other terrestrial planets. The report is published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

The Hubble Space Telescope has been sidelined by a serious pointing problem. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is unique among all moons in our solar system for its dense and nitrogen-rich atmosphere that also contains hydrocarbons and other compounds, and the story behind the formation of this rich chemical mix has been the source of some scientific debate. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Astronomers have carried out a study of almost 300 hundred planetary nebulae in the supergiant elliptical galaxy Messier 87. The new research, published September 27 on the arXiv pre-print repository, reveals essential information about the galaxy’s outer halo and its subcomponents. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Astronomers using ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory have captured the X-ray glow (shown here in purple) emitted by the hot gas that pervades the galaxy cluster XLSSC006. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

EPFL astrophysicists actively participated in the discovery of a very rare star, which is particularly old and metal-poor. As a messenger from the distant past, it will allow the scientists to learn more about the young universe, right after the Big Bang. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →

Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is 100 times closer to us than any other SMBH and therefore a prime candidate for studies of how matter radiates as it accretes onto black holes. SgrA* has been observed for decades and rapid fluctuations reported from X-ray to the near infrared wavelengths (intervening dust reduces optical light signals by a factor of over a trillion) and at submillimeter and radio wavelengths. Modeling the mechanisms of light variability is a direct challenge to our understanding of accretion onto SMBHs, but it is thought that correlations between flare timingRead More →

Researchers from Keele University and an international team of astronomers have reported for the first time that a white dwarf and a brown dwarf collided in a ‘blaze of glory’ that was witnessed on Earth in 1670. Powered by WPeMaticoRead More →