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Astronomy News & Research
 | It takes special software to map the universe from noisy data. Berkeley Lab scientists developed a code called MADmap to do just that for the cosmic microwave background, then posted it on the web for other interested sky mappers. Scientists probing the sky with the PACS instrument aboard the Herschel satellite have adapted MADmap to make spectacular images of the infrared universe. ...> Full Article |
 | The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), slated for liftoff on Feb. 9th, will make IMAX-quality movies of solar explosions, peer beneath the stellar surface to see the sun's inner dynamo, and--researchers hope--unravel the mysteries of solar variability. ...> Full Article |
 | Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Binary quasars, like other quasars, are thought to be the product of galaxy mergers. Until now, however, binary quasars have not been seen in galaxies unambiguously in the act of merging. But images from the Carnegie Institution's Magellan telescope in Chile show two distinct galaxies with "tails" produced by their mutual gravitational attraction. ...> Full Article |
 | Using data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created a demographic census of galaxy types and shapes from a time before the Earth and the sun existed, to the present day. The results show that more than half of the present-day spiral galaxies had peculiar shapes only six billion years ago, which, if confirmed, highlights the importance of collisions and mergers in the recent past of many galaxies. It also provides clues for the unique status of our own galaxy. ...> Full Article |
 | ESO is releasing a magnificent VLT image of the giant stellar nursery surrounding NGC 3603, in which stars are continuously being born. Embedded in this scenic nebula is one of the most luminous and most compact clusters of young, massive stars in our Milky Way, which therefore serves as an excellent "local" analogue of very active star-forming regions in other galaxies. The cluster also hosts the most massive star to be "weighed" so far. ...> Full Article |
 | The Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera has imaged craters both young and old in this view of the Southern Highlands of Mars. ...> Full Article |
 | Differences in the number and speed of cometary impacts onto Jupiter's large moons Ganymede and Callisto some 3.8 billion years ago can explain their vastly different surfaces and interior states, according to research by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute appearing online in Nature Geoscience Jan. 24, 2010. ...> Full Article |
 | Packed with novel devices and science instruments, Proba-2 is demonstrating technologies for future ESA missions while providing new views of our sun. ...> Full Article |
Astronomers have found an example of the rare type of supernova thought to produce Gamma Ray Bursts, but through radio, not gamma-ray, observations. The breakthrough, they say, will lead to discovering many more of these objects.
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 | Astronomers using ESO's Very Large Telescope have detected, in another galaxy, a stellar-mass black hole much farther away than any other previously known. With a mass above fifteen times that of the Sun, this is also the second most massive stellar-mass black hole ever found. It is entwined with a star that will soon become a black hole itself. ...> Full Article |
 | Michigan State University astronomer Megan Donahue uses words such as "cool" and "interesting" to describe the two distinct "tails" found on a long tail of gas that is believed to be forming stars where few stars have been formed before. ...> Full Article |
 | ESO has just released a stunning new image of the vast cloud known as the Cat's Paw Nebula or NGC 6334. This complex region of gas and dust, where numerous massive stars are born, lies near the heart of the Milky Way galaxy, and is heavily obscured by intervening dust clouds. ...> Full Article |
 | New research by MIT Professor of Planetary Science Richard Binzel examines the opposite scenario: that Earth has considerable influence on asteroids -- and from a distance much larger than previously thought. The finding helps answer an elusive, decades-long question about where most meteorites come from before they fall to Earth and also opens the door to a new field study of asteroid seismology. ...> Full Article |
 | An international team led by a cosmologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has extended the relationship between the x-ray luminosity and the mass of galaxy clusters as measured by gravitational lensing, improving the reliability of mass measurements of much older, more distant, and smaller galactic structures. These refined measurements will benefit both the understanding of dark matter and the nature of dark energy as well. ...> Full Article |
On Nov. 13, the European Space Agency's comet orbiter spacecraft, Rosetta, swooped by Earth for its third and final gravity assist on the way to humankind's first rendezvous to orbit and study a comet in more detail than has ever been attempted.
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