Space and astronomy news
Image credit: SDSS Gravitational lensing happens when the light from a distant object, such as a quasar, is distorted by the gravity of a closer object. Astronomers have discovered just such a lens, where the distortions are so great, they have to be caused by a significant amount of dark matter – the visible material …
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Image credit: NASA Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity got another confirmation this week thanks to research by an astronomer from NASA. Some theorists believed that particles popping into and out of existence in space would slow light down, as if it was moving through air or water. Scientists measured the total energy of gamma rays …
Image credit: JACH A young, hot star has been found nestled inside a cocoon of molecular hydrogen gas half a light-year across. The star is called IRAS 07427-2400, and it’s sending out a solar wind so fast (360,000 km/h) that the shock waves are heating up the gas so it’s visible to Earth-based telescopes. Astronomers …
Image credit: NRAO One of the most distant galaxies ever seen seems to be in the midst of extremely active star formation. The galaxy has been dubbed the Cloverleaf, and it’s 11 billion light-years away, so astronomers are seeing it when the Universe was less than 3 billion years old. It has a rate of …
Image credit: PPARC Astronomers from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council believe they’ve discovered a planetary system around Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Not only that, the star system seems remarkably similar to our own Solar System. So far, they’ve found evidence for a Neptune-sized planet in the same orbit …
Image credit: Hubble Although stars can burn for billions of years, their final stages can take a relatively short period of time. In many cases, it only takes a few hundred thousand years for dying stars to slough off their outer layers to create the familiar planetary nebula. Since they happen so quickly, they’re relatively …
Image credit: ESA Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin believe they’ve figured out an inexpensive way to search for extrasolar planets. After stars like our own Sun use up their fuel they eventually turn into red giant stars, and then shrink again to become white dwarfs. Although the process will likely destroy the …
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Image credit: Hubble Astronomers have known for nearly a century that galaxies are distinct islands of stars, floating apart from each other in space. But it turns out that galaxies are more connected than previously believed because of large-scale “galactic winds” which blow off of galaxies and interact with each other. Researchers from the University …
Image credit: Hubble Three of the Universe’s largest explosions: gamma-ray bursts, X-ray flashes, and supernovae could actually come from the same event – the collapse of a supermassive star. An astronomer from Caltech has found that the different kinds of explosions seem to contain the same amount of energy, they’re just divided up differently between …
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Image credit: ESA The European Space Agency’s mission to Mars, Mars Express, is right on schedule to arrive at the Red Planet on December 25, 2003. The British-built Beagle 2 lander will also reach Mars the same day, but it will be released from Mars Express on December 19. Beagle 2 doesn’t have any propulsion …