Astronomy News and Research - September 2009 Archives

Sea level stargazing: Astronomers make key sighting with Florida telescope (9/30/2009)

This summer, University of Florida astronomers inaugurated the world's largest optical telescope on a nearly 8,000-foot mountaintop 3,480 miles away. ...> Full Article

Key process for space outpost proved on 'vomit comet' ride (9/29/2009)

During flights simulating the moon's low gravity, Case Western Reserve University researchers find that sifters can separate soil particles and produce the best feedstock for an oxygen generator. NASA and Case Western Reserve scientists are designing and testing components of the generator, which would provide oxygen needed for a lunar or Martian outpost. ...> Full Article

NASA Goddard shoots the moon to track lunar spacecraft (9/29/2009)

Twenty-eight times per second, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center fire a laser that travels about 250,000 miles to hit the minivan-sized Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft moving at nearly 3,600 miles per hour as it orbits the moon. ...> Full Article

Twin Keck telescopes probe dual dust disks (9/28/2009)

Astronomers using the twin 10-meter telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have explored one of the most compact dust disks ever resolved around another star. If placed in our own solar system, the disk would span about four times Earth's distance from the sun, reaching nearly to Jupiter's orbit. The compact inner disk is accompanied by an outer disk that extends hundreds of times farther. ...> Full Article

Scientists see water ice in fresh meteorite craters on Mars (9/27/2009)

Scientists are seeing sub-surface water ice that may be 99 percent pure halfway between the north pole and the equator on Mars, thanks to quick-turnaround observations from orbit of fresh meteorite impact craters on the planet. ...> Full Article

Deep Impact and other spacecraft find clear evidence of water on moon (9/26/2009)

New data from the Deep Impact spacecraft and the Moon Mineralogy Mapper, an instrument aboard India's recently ended Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, provide, for the first time, clear evidence that water exists on the surface of the moon. ...> Full Article

Measuring the Sun's hidden variability (9/26/2009)

Every 11 years, the sun undergoes a furious upheaval. Dark sunspots burst forth from beneath the sun's surface. Explosions as powerful as a billion atomic bombs spark intense flares of high-energy radiation. NASA is launching a sensor named EVE on the Solar Dynamics Observatory will be able to see these explosions. ...> Full Article

New vista of Milky Way center unveiled (9/25/2009)

A dramatic new vista of the center of the Milky Way galaxy from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory exposes new levels of the complexity and intrigue in the Galactic center. The mosaic of 88 Chandra pointings represents a freeze-frame of the spectacle of stellar evolution, from bright young stars to black holes, in a crowded, hostile environment dominated by a central, supermassive black hole. ...> Full Article

Invading black holes explain cosmic flashes (9/24/2009)

Black holes are invading stars, providing a radical explanation to bright flashes in the universe that are one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy today. ...> Full Article

Nullarbor fireball cameras find rare meteorite (9/23/2009)

Using cameras which capture fireballs streaking across the night sky and sophisticated mathematics, a world-wide team of scientists have managed to find not only a tiny meteorite on the vast Nullarbor Plain, but also its orbit and the asteroid it came from. ...> Full Article

Computer code gives astrophysicists first full simulation of star's final hours (9/23/2009)

The precise conditions inside a white dwarf star in the hours leading up to its explosive end as a Type Ia supernova are one of the mysteries confronting astrophysicists studying these massive stellar explosions. Now a team of astrophysicists and mathematicians at the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has created the first full-star simulation of the hours preceding the largest thermonuclear explosions in the universe. ...> Full Article

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's LAMP shedding light on permanently shadowed regions of the moon (9/22/2009)

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched on June 18 of this year, has begun its extensive exploration of the lunar environment and will return more data about the moon than any previous mission. The Lyman-Alpha Mapping Project, developed by Southwest Research Institute, is an integral part of the LRO science investigation. LAMP uses a novel method to peer into the perpetual darkness of the moon's so-called permanently shadowed regions. ...> Full Article

Planck first light yields promising results (9/21/2009)

Planck, ESA's mission to study the early Universe, started surveying the sky regularly from its vantage point at L2 on August 13. The instruments of ESA's "time machine" were fine-tuned for optimum performance in the period preceding this date. In preparation for routine scientific operations, their long-term stability has been verified by conducting a first trial survey. ...> Full Article

Swift makes best-ever ultraviolet portrait of Andromeda Galaxy (9/20/2009)

In a break from its usual task of searching for distant cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift satellite has acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own. ...> Full Article

Team unravels the chemistry of Titan's hazy atmosphere (9/19/2009)

A team of University of Hawai'i at Manoa researchers led by Ralf Kaiser, physical chemist at UH Manoa, unraveled the chemical evolution of the orange-brownish colored atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, the only solar system body besides Venus and Earth with a solid surface and thick atmosphere. ...> Full Article

First solid evidence for a rocky exoplanet (9/18/2009)

The longest set of HARPS measurements ever made has firmly established the nature of the smallest and fastest-orbiting exoplanet known, CoRoT-7b, revealing its mass as five times that of Earth's. Combined with CoRoT-7b's known radius, less than twice Earth's, this tells us that the exoplanet's density is quite similar to the Earth's, suggesting a solid, rocky world. The extensive dataset also reveals the presence of another so-called super-Earth in this alien solar system. ...> Full Article

New observations solve longstanding mystery of tipped stars (9/18/2009)

New observations solve longstanding mystery of tipped rotation. In addition to shedding light on how binary stars form, the explanation knocks down a possible challenge to Einstein's theory of relativity. ...> Full Article

Amazing, interactive, 360-degree panoramic view of the entire night sky (9/17/2009)

The first of three images of ESO's GigaGalaxy Zoom project -- a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO's observing sites in Chile -- has just been released online. The project allows stargazers to explore and experience the Universe as it is seen with the unaided eye from the darkest and best viewing locations in the world. ...> Full Article

Sophisticated telescope camera debuts with peek at nest of black holes (9/16/2009)

Less than two months after they inaugurated the world's largest telescope, University of Florida astronomers have used one of the world's most advanced telescopic instruments to gather images of the heavens. ...> Full Article

Scientists discover surprise in Earth's upper atmosphere (9/14/2009)

UCLA atmospheric scientists have discovered a basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere, which was previously unknown. The research could improve the safety and reliability of spacecraft that operate in the upper atmosphere. "It's like finding it got hotter when the sun went down," said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. ...> Full Article

Rebirth of an icon: Hubble's first images since Servicing Mission 4 (9/13/2009)

Astronomers today declared the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope a fully rejuvenated observatory ready for a new decade of exploration, with the release of observations from four of its six operating science instruments. ...> Full Article

Magnetic fields play larger role in star formation than previously thought (9/12/2009)

The simple picture of star formation calls for giant clouds of gas and dust to collapse inward due to gravity, growing denser and hotter until igniting nuclear fusion. In reality, forces other than gravity also influence the birth of stars. New research shows that cosmic magnetic fields play a more important role in star formation than previously thought. ...> Full Article

Fermi Large Area Telescope reveals pulsing gamma-ray sources (9/11/2009)

Scientists at the Naval Research Laboratory Space Science Division and a team of international researchers have positively identified cosmic sources of gamma-ray emissions through the discovery of 16 pulsating neutron stars. Using the Large Area Telescope, the primary instrument on NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope satellite, the discoveries were made by conducting blind frequency searches on the sparse photon data provided by the LAT. ...> Full Article

Physicist unlocking the mysteries of neighboring galaxies (9/9/2009)

An international team of astronomers, including Queen's University physicist Larry Widrow, have uncovered evidence of a nearby cosmic encounter. Their study indicates that the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies, the two galaxies closest to our own, collided about two to three billion years ago. ...> Full Article

Astronomer finds giant galaxy surrounding most distant black hole (9/8/2009)

University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomer Dr. Tomotsugu Goto and colleagues have discovered a giant galaxy surrounding the most distant black hole ever found. The galaxy, which is 12.8 billion light-years from Earth, is as large as the Milky Way galaxy and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as does our sun. ...> Full Article

XMM-Newton uncovers a celestial Rosetta stone (9/7/2009)

ESA's XMM-Newton orbiting X-ray telescope has uncovered a celestial Rosetta stone: the first close-up of a white dwarf star, circling a companion star, that could explode into a particular kind of supernova in a few million years. These supernovae are used as beacons to measure cosmic distances and ultimately understand the expansion of our Universe. ...> Full Article

Researchers show component of mothballs is present in deep-space clouds (9/6/2009)

Researchers from the University of Georgia have just shown for the first time that one component of clouds emitting unusual infrared light know as the Unidentified Infrared Bands is a gaseous version of naphthalene, the chief component of mothballs back on Earth. The UIRs have been seen by astronomers for more than 30 years, but no one has ever identified what specific molecules cause these patterns. ...> Full Article

Are Sunspots Disappearing? (9/6/2009)

The sun is in the pits of the deepest solar minimum in a century. Weeks and sometimes whole months go by without even a single tiny sunspot. The quiet has prompted some observers to wonder, are sunspots disappearing? ...> Full Article

NGC 4945: The Milky Way's not-so-distant cousin (9/5/2009)

ESO has released a striking new image of a nearby galaxy that many astronomers think closely resembles our own Milky Way. Though the galaxy is seen edge-on, observations of NGC 4945 suggest that this hive of stars is a spiral galaxy much like our own, with swirling, luminous arms and a bar-shaped central region. These resemblances aside, NGC 4945 has a brighter center that likely harbors a supermassive black hole, which is devouring reams of matter and blasting energy out into space. ...> Full Article

Radio-telescope measurements advance frontier physics (9/4/2009)

High-precision observations are key to major goal of 21st-century physics ...> Full Article

Astronomers find coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth (9/3/2009)

The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth. No human is thought to have ever been there but it is expected to yield images of the heavens three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground. ...> Full Article

Is the Milky Way doomed to be destroyed by galactic bombardment? Probably not, study says (9/2/2009)

As scientists attempt to learn more about how galaxies evolve, an open question has been whether collisions with our dwarf galactic neighbors will one day tear apart the disk of the Milky Way. That grisly fate is unlikely, a new study now suggests. ...> Full Article

Signs of ideal surfing conditions spotted in ocean of solar wind (9/1/2009)

Researchers at the University of Warwick have found what could be the signal of ideal wave "surfing" conditions for individual particles within the massive turbulent ocean of the solar wind. The discovery could give a new insight into just how energy is dissipated in solar system sized plasmas such as the solar wind and could provide significant clues to scientists developing fusion power which relies on plasmas. ...> Full Article