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Herschel space observatory

Orion’s Secret Fire Dance

May 15, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter The Great Orion Nebula has captivated observers for at least four hundred years, but the ancient Mayans may have known about its secrets long before then. According to legend, the nebula might have been the smoke situated between the “Three Hearthstones” [...]

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Milky Way’s Black Hole Munches On Supercooked Gas

May 7, 2013

It’s a simple menu, but smoking hot. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy is sucking in ultra-hot molecular gas, as seen through the eyes of the Herschel space telescope. Remove this ad

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Historic Comet Smashup Brought Water to Jupiter’s Stratosphere

April 23, 2013

A large comet that peppered Jupiter two decades ago brought water into the giant planet’s atmosphere, according to new research from the Herschel space observatory. Shoemaker-Levy 9 astounded astronomers worldwide when its 21 fragments hit Jupiter in June 1994. The event was predicted and observatories were trained on Jupiter as the impact occurred. The dark [...]

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Ancient Galaxy ‘Bursting’ with Stars

April 17, 2013

Most of the early galaxies that astronomers have been able to observe are small with a low-to-moderate amount of star production. But now the Herschel Space Observatory has found a massive dust-filled galaxy churning out stars at an incredible rate, with all of this taking place back when the cosmos was a just 880 million [...]

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Herschel Spacecraft Won’t “Bomb” the Moon, But GRAIL Will

December 11, 2012

Artist concept of Ebb and Flow, the two GRAIL spacecraft in orbit of the Moon. Credit: NASA The Herschel space telescope is slated to be decommissioned next March as the observatory’s supply of cryogenic helium will be depleted. One idea for “disposing” of the spacecraft was to have it impact the Moon, a la the [...]

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