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Astronomy News and Research - August 2009 Archives
 | The dust-filled disks where new planets may be forming around other stars occasionally take on some difficult-to-understand shapes. Now, a team led by John Debes at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., finds that a star's motion through interstellar gas can account for many of them. ...> Full Article |
Subtle connections between the 11-year solar cycle, the stratosphere, and the tropical Pacific Ocean work in sync to generate periodic weather patterns that affect much of the globe, according to research appearing this week in the journal Science.
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 | An international team of researchers has debunked one of astronomy's long held beliefs about how stars are formed, using a set of galaxies found with CSIRO's Parkes radio telescope. ...> Full Article |
 | Today ESO has released a new image of the Trifid Nebula, showing just why it is a firm favorite of astronomers, amateur and professional alike. This massive star factory is so named for the dark dust bands that trisect its glowing heart, and is a rare combination of three nebula types, revealing the fury of freshly formed stars and presaging more star birth. ...> Full Article |
A new and likely controversial paper has just been published online in Nature Geoscience by LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology Chair Patrick Hesp and United States Geological Survey scientist David Rubin.
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 | A significant advance in our understanding of the early evolution of the universe has been achieved by a team of scientists associated with the LIGO and Virgo scientific collaborations. The research has put new constraints on the details of how the universe looked in its earliest moments, and has discovered the most stringent limits yet on the amount of gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang. ...> Full Article |
Results set new limits on gravitational waves that could have come from the Big Bang, and begin to constrain current theories about universe formation
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 | New images delve into the heart of a cosmic cloud, called RCW 38, crowded with budding stars and planetary systems. There, young, titanic stars bombard fledgling suns and planets with powerful winds and blazing light, helped in their devastating task by short-lived, massive stars that explode as supernovae. In some cases, this energetic onslaught cooks away the matter that may eventually form new solar systems. Scientists think that our own solar system emerged from such a dramatic environment. ...> Full Article |
 | Solar physicists at NASA have confirmed that small, sudden bursts of heat and energy, called nanoflares, cause temperatures in the thin, translucent gas of the sun's atmosphere to reach millions of degrees. ...> Full Article |
 | Astronomers recently observed a mysterious flux of particles in the universe, and the hope was born that this may be the first observation of the remnants of "dark matter." But scientists from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have shown that there is another explanation of the flux. ...> Full Article |
 | Mars may not be as dormant as scientists once thought. The 2004 discovery of methane means that either there is life on Mars, or that volcanic activity continues to generate heat below the martian surface. ESA plans to find out which it is. Either outcome is big news for a planet once thought to be biologically and geologically inactive. ...> Full Article |
 | A new study from two of NASA's Great Observatories provides fresh insight into how some stars are born, along with a beautiful new image of a stellar nursery in our Galaxy. The research shows that radiation from massive stars may trigger the formation of many more stars than previously thought. ...> Full Article |
 | The stellar explosions known as type 1a supernovae have long been used as "standard candles," their uniform brightness giving astronomers a way to measure cosmic distances and the expansion of the universe. But a new study published this week in Nature reveals sources of variability in type 1a supernovae that will have to be taken into account if astronomers are to use them for more precise measurements in the future. ...> Full Article |
 | Saturn's moon Titan is dull, weatherwise. Nothing happens for years, making it hard to understand the carved channels that seem to line the surface. Now Titan has finally been caught in the act. Caltech planetary astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues set a trap for Titan, waited years for it to be tripped, and, finally, caught their prey: bright but transient clouds over Titan's tropics, a region where clouds were thought unlikely to form. ...> Full Article |
 | One of the hottest topics at this year's XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union involves the study of the conditions favorable for the development and survival of primordial life. New research shows that compared to middle-aged stars like the Sun, newly formed stars spin faster generating strong magnetic fields that result in emission of more intense levels of radiation -- all of which could wreak havoc on budding atmospheres and have a dramatic effect on the development of life forms. ...> Full Article |
 | The first black holes in the universe had dramatic effects on their surroundings, according to recent simulations carried out at the SLAC/Stanford Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. Several popular theories posit that the first black holes gorged themselves on gas clouds and dust, growing into the supersized black holes that lurk in the centers of galaxies today. However, the new results point to a much more complex role for the first black holes. ...> Full Article |
 | High-resolution observations of the star Betelgeuse show for the first time the violent gas movements on its surface. ...> Full Article |
 | Saturn's haze-enshrouded moon Titan turns out to have much in common with Earth in the way that weather and geology shape its terrain, according to two pieces of research to be presented at the XXVII General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wind, rain, volcanoes, tectonics and other Earth-like processes all sculpt features on Titan's complex and varied surface in an environment more than 100 °C colder on average than Antarctica. ...> Full Article |
To measure the expansion history of the universe, the design chosen for the Joint Dark Energy mission will use three techniques -- supernovae, weak lensing, and baryon acoustic oscillation -- but it will emphasize baryon acoustic oscillation. Good science, but many scientists think it can be done better, cheaper, and more dependably from the ground -- by BigBOSS.
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 | An exciting new astrophysics mission led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will provide a revolutionary window into the universe. Named the Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), the satellite will be the first to systematically measure the polarization of cosmic X-ray sources. ...> Full Article |
 | A team of astronomers has measured the motions of stars in a very distant galaxy for the first time and discovered they are whizzing around at astonishingly high speeds -- about one million miles per hour, or twice the speed at which the sun circles our own Milky Way galaxy. The finding offers new insights into how these early galaxies may have evolved into the more familiar ones we see in the nearby universe. ...> Full Article |
 | NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has taken its first shots of the cosmos since warming up and starting its second career. The infrared telescope ran out of coolant on May 15, 2009, more than five-and-half-years after launch, and has since warmed to a still-frosty 30 Kelvin (about minus 406 Fahrenheit). New images demonstrate that the observatory remains a powerful tool for probing the dusty universe. ...> Full Article |
 | ESO has just released a stunning new image of a field of stars towards the constellation of Carina. This striking view is ablaze with a flurry of stars of all colors and brightnesses. One unusual star in the middle, HD 87643, has been extensively studied with ESO telescopes. Surrounded by a complex nebula that is the result of previous violent ejections, the star has been shown to have a companion. Interactions in this system may be the engine fueling the star's nebula. ...> Full Article |
Comets contained vast oceans of liquid water in their interiors during the first million years of their formation, a new study claims. The watery environment of early comets, together with the vast quantity of organics already discovered in comets, would have provided ideal conditions for primitive bacteria to grow and multiply. So argue Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe and his colleagues at the Cardiff Center for Astrobiology in a paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology.
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 | A likely comet collision on Jupiter last week caused a minor sensation, but new research shows that similar impacts on Earth are most likely not responsible for any of the planet's mass extinctions, nor have they been responsible for more than one minor extinction event. ...> Full Article |
A study published this week in the journal Nature offers an explanation for the origin of dwarf spheroidal galaxies. The research may settle an outstanding puzzle in understanding galaxy formation.
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