It takes a nice safe environment for planets to form, according to new data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope. The powerful infrared observatory recently observed powerful O-type stars in the process of stripping away nearby planet-forming disks. The gigantic stars can have as much as 100 times the mass of the Sun, and generate killer solar winds. In one case, the planetary disc takes on a comet-like appearance, as planetary material is blown away from the star.
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Nearby Universe Mapped in 3 Dimensions
A new map developed by an international team of astronomers should help you find your way around the Universe – at least to a distance of 600 million light years. This new 3-dimensional map plots out the locations of all the major superclusters of galaxies and the voids that surround them. It was developed using data from the 2MASS Redshift Survey, which calculated the redshifts (and therefore the distances) of 25,000 galaxies across the entire sky.
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Expedition 13, Ansari Return to Earth
A Soyuz capsule carrying the crew of Expedition 13 and space tourist Anousheh Ansari landed safely in the steppes of Kazakhstan on Thursday. The spacecraft slowed its descent using retrorockets and parachutes, and landed softly on its side. A dozen helicopter teams arrived on the scene minutes later to help the astronauts out of the spacecraft. They were then flown to a training centre outside Moscow. The total return time back to Earth took about 3 hours from when the capsule detached from the space station.
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How the Really Big Stars Form
Astronomers think they’ve got a handle on how Sun-sized stars come together. But the formation of the largest stars – more than 10 times the mass of the Sun – still puzzle astronomers. New observations on a 20 solar mass star have revealed that these giant stars maintain a torus of material around themselves. They can continuously feed from this “doughnut” of material, while powerful jets of radiation pour from their poles. The material can continue gathering onto the star while avoiding this radiation, which would normally blast it back into space.
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New Kind of Supernova Discovered
Astronomers used to believe that all Type 1a supernovae were essentially the same brightness. That’s because they explode with the same amount of fuel. But now a supernova has been discovered that’s twice as bright as all the other Type 1a supernovae. This is a problem, since this kind of supernovae are used as standard candles, to determine distances across the Universe. Most recently, these supernovae have been used to calculate the mysterious force called dark energy that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe.
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The Location of the Oldest Recorded Supernova Discovered
Ancient Chinese astronomers recorded the occurence of a bright star in the sky in 185 AD; probably a supernova explosion. And now modern astronomers think they’ve found that explosion’s corpse: supernova remnant RCW 86. New calculations have found that RCW 86 is about 2000 years old, making it the best candidate for this ancient supernova. This new data was gathered using the XMM-Newton and Chandra X-Ray observatories.
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Brown Dwarf Discovered in Planetary System
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has directly imaged a small brown dwarf star orbiting a larger star – the first time this has ever been seen. The brown dwarf, HD 3651, is classified as a “T dwarf”, has about 50 times the mass of Jupiter, and orbits about 10 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto. Astronomers theorized that the system contained a brown dwarf, because a Saturn-sized planet had a strangely elliptical orbit; something was tugging on it.
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Pulsars Confirm Einstein’s Theories
Einstein was right. Well, according to new observations of a double pulsar, he was at least 99.95% right. An international team of astronomers have been measuring the pulsar pair for three years, and have detected several effects that match Einstein’s theory of general relativity. It’s believed the two pulsars are losing energy through the radiation of gravitational waves, and will eventually spiral into each other.
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Subaru Finds the Most Distant Galaxy
The powerful Subaru telescope in Hawai’i has found the most distant galaxy ever seen, located 12.88 billion light-years away – this is only 780 million years after the Big Bang. Observing objects this distant is extremely difficult, not only because of the great distances involved, but because much of the Universe was obscured behind neutral hydrogen. Stars only then began clearing out this neutral hydrogen, making the Universe transparent.
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Xena Renamed to Eris
Provisionally designated 2003ub313, and nicknamed Xena by its discoverers, this newly discovered dwarf planet has been officially named Eris by the International Astronomical Union. The name was proposed by Mike Brown, a member of the team that made its discovery, and the name was accepted by the committee. In Greek lore, Eris is the goddess of discord and strife. Its moon has been named Dysnomia, the Daimon spirit of lawlessness.
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