Astronomy News & Research

Most extreme white dwarf binary system found with orbit of just 5 minutes (3/13/2010)

An international team of astronomers, including Professor Tom Marsh and Dr. Danny Steeghs from the University of Warwick, have shown that the two stars in the binary HM Cancri definitely revolve around each other in a mere 5.4 minutes. This makes HM Cancri the binary star with by far the shortest known orbital period. It is also the smallest known binary. ...> Full Article

Lava likely made river-like channel on Mars (3/12/2010)

Flowing lava can carve or build paths very much like the riverbeds and canyons etched by water, and this probably explains at least one of the meandering channels on the surface of Mars. ...> Full Article

Biggest, deepest crater exposes hidden, ancient moon (3/11/2010)

Shortly after the Moon formed, an asteroid smacked into its southern hemisphere and gouged out a truly enormous crater, the South Pole-Aitken basin, almost 1,500 miles across and more than five miles deep. ...> Full Article

Phobos flyby success (3/10/2010)

Mars Express encountered Phobos last night, smoothly skimming past at just 67 km, the closest any manmade object has ever approached Mars' enigmatic moon. The data collected could help unlock the origin of not just Phobos but other "second generation" moons. ...> Full Article

The cosmic bat (3/9/2010)

The delicate nebula NGC 1788, located in a dark and often neglected corner of the Orion constellation, is revealed in a new and finely nuanced image that ESO is releasing today. Although this ghostly cloud is rather isolated from Orion's bright stars, the latter's powerful winds and light have had a strong impact on the nebula, forging its shape and making it home to a multitude of infant suns. ...> Full Article

First signal received by future telescope (3/8/2010)

An historic milestone was reached recently in Australia's bid to host the Square Kilometre Array telescope -- a future international radio telescope that will be the world's largest and most sensitive. ...> Full Article

NASA's Fermi probes 'dragons' of the gamma-ray sky (3/7/2010)

One of the pleasures of perusing ancient maps is locating regions so poorly explored that mapmakers warned of dragons and sea monsters. Now, astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope find themselves in the same situation as cartographers of old. A new study of the ever-present fog of gamma rays from sources outside our galaxy shows that less than a third of the emission arises from what astronomers once considered the most likely suspects -- black-hole-powered jets from active galaxies. ...> Full Article

How to hunt for exoplanets (3/6/2010)

A new report launched by the Institute of Physics (IOP) "Exoplanets - The search for planets beyond our solar system" explains how new technological advances have seen the discovery of more than 400 exoplanets to date, a number expected to rise to thousands in the next few years. ...> Full Article

Astronomically large lenses measure the age and size of the universe (3/5/2010)

Using entire galaxies as lenses to look at other galaxies, researchers have a newly precise way to measure the size and age of the universe and how rapidly it is expanding. The measurement determines a value for the Hubble constant, which indicates the size of the universe, and confirms the age of the universe as 13.75 billion years old, within 170 million years. The results also confirm the strength of dark energy, responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe. ...> Full Article

First of missing primitive stars discovered (3/5/2010)

Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. ...> Full Article

Mars Express heading for closest flyby of Phobos (3/4/2010)

ESA's Mars Express will skim the surface of Mars' largest moon Phobos on Wednesday evening. Passing by at an altitude of 67 km, precise radio tracking will allow researchers to peer inside the mysterious moon. ...> Full Article

Widening the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (3/3/2010)

Writing exclusively in March's Physics World, Davies, director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science at Arizona State University in the US, explains why the search for radio signals is limited and how we might progress. ...> Full Article

New 'alien' invaders found in the Milky Way: Queen's University astronomer (3/2/2010)

As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are "invaders" from other galaxies, according to a new study. ...> Full Article

First measurement of the age of cometary material (3/1/2010)

Though comets are thought to be some of the oldest, most primitive bodies in the solar system, new research on comet Wild 2 indicates that inner solar system material was transported to the comet-forming region at least 1.7 million years after the formation of the oldest solar system solids. ...> Full Article

Light, wind and fire (2/27/2010)

Today ESO has released a dramatic new image of NGC 346, the brightest star-forming region in our neighbouring galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, 210 000 light-years away towards the constellation of Tucana (the Toucan). The light, wind and heat given off by massive stars have dispersed the glowing gas within and around this star cluster, forming a surrounding wispy nebular structure that looks like a cobweb. ...> Full Article