Astronomy News and Research Archives Page 20

The mysterious ridges at the mouth of Tiu Valles (9/15/2007)

These images taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board Mars Express show the mouth of the Tiu Valles channel system on the red planet. ...> Full Article

Stars caught in bizarre death-dance (9/15/2007)

Astronomers played a key role in discovering one of the most bizarre objects in space: a star "skeleton" of very low mass that is orbiting and being slowly consumed by a pulsar, or remains of a second massive star, that is itself spinning faster than a kitchen blender. ...> Full Article

Cluster And Double Star Uncover More On Bright Aurorae (9/14/2007)

Cluster data has helped provide scientists with a new view of magnetospheric processes, challenging existing theories about magnetic substorms that cause aurorae and perturbations in GPS signals. ...> Full Article

Cassini Flies By Saturn's Walnut-Shaped Moon Iapetus (9/14/2007)

Cassini completed its closest flyby of the odd moon Iapetus on Sept. 10, 2007. The spacecraft flew about 1,640 kilometers (1,000 miles) from Iapetus' surface and is returning amazing views of the bizarre moon. ...> Full Article

Opportunity Takes A Dip Into Victoria Crater (9/14/2007)

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity entered Victoria Crater for the first time September 11, 2007. It radioed home information via a relay by NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, reporting its activities for the day. ...> Full Article

New planet discovery announced by astronomers (9/13/2007)

A large team of astronomers, including scientists from the University of Delaware and Mt. Cuba Observatory, has announced that at least one planet in the universe has survived the violent events that accompany the late stages of a star's life cycle. ...> Full Article

Astronomers Will Trace Planet Formation With Neon (9/13/2007)

Astronomers have observed neon in disks of dust and gas swirling around sunlike stars for the first time. ...> Full Article

Centre Creates Largest Ever Catalogue of X-Ray Sources (9/11/2007)

Work aids understanding of violent universe ...> Full Article

Astrophysicists predict most dangerous explosions (9/11/2007)

A team of astrophysicists at The University of Western Australia today announced results from a new computer program that predicts when potentially dangerous bursts of gamma radiation may hit our planet. ...> Full Article

Astronomers eager to add to Sky in Google Earth (9/8/2007)

Since Sky in Google Earth debuted two weeks ago to let the public explore the heavens from their computers, two University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have jumped in to populate Google's sky with the most recently discovered heavenly objects. ...> Full Article

Joint Dark Energy Mission a Top Priority for NASA (9/8/2007)

The National Research Council's Beyond Einstein Program Assessment Committee has recommended that the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM), jointly supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy, be the first of NASA's Beyond Einstein cosmology missions to be developed and launched. ...> Full Article

Phoenix Mars Lander Status Report: Radar, Other Gear Pass Checkouts (9/7/2007)

Two crucial tools for a successful landing of America's latest mission to Mars, the radar and UHF radio on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, have passed in-flight checkouts. ...> Full Article

Mice Stressed In Simulated Weightlessness Show Organ Atrophy (9/7/2007)

A ground-based, experimental model used to simulate astronaut weightlessness in space has provided Rutgers scientists an opportunity to study the effects of stress on immune organs. ...> Full Article

New research reveals a large asteroid breakup to be the likely source of the impactor that caused a mass extinction event on Earth 65 million years ago (9/6/2007)

The impactor believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs and other life forms on Earth some 65 million years ago has been traced back to a breakup event in the main asteroid belt. A joint U.S.-Czech team from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and Charles University in Prague suggests that the parent object of asteroid (298) Baptistina disrupted when it was hit by another large asteroid, creating numerous large fragments that would later create the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula as well as the prominent Tycho crater found on the Moon. ...> Full Article

'Heart' of Herschel to be presented to media (9/6/2007)

By the end of 2007, the assembly of the ESA's Herschel far-infrared space observatory - the latest mission to study the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies - will be completed. ...> Full Article

Up, Up And Away -- To Venus (9/5/2007)

Scientists hope to learn more about climate changes here on Earth by studying Venus. A prototype balloon could eventually study the planet's surface and examine its atmosphere and the bizarre winds and chemistry within it. A team of JPL, ILC Dover and NASA Wallops Flight Facility engineers designed, fabricated and tested the balloon. ...> Full Article

'Lucky Camera' takes sharpest ever images of stars (9/5/2007)

A team of astronomers led by Cambridge University have taken pictures of the stars that are sharper than anything produced by the Hubble telescope, at 50 thousandths of the cost. ...> Full Article

'One Of The Most Curious Objects In The Sky' Delights Astronomers Again (9/5/2007)

Edwin Hubble once called IC 10 "one of the most curious objects in the sky," and new observations of the extremely faint, lightweight dwarf galaxy are giving scientists new clues about how populations of stars are born. ...> Full Article

500 days at Venus, and the surprises keep coming (9/4/2007)

Venus Express has now orbited Earth's twin for 500 Earth days, completing as many orbits. While the satellite maintains steady and excellent performance, the planet continues to surprise and amaze us. ...> Full Article

Stellar Firework in a Whirlwind (9/4/2007)

Stars do not like to be alone. Indeed, most stars are members of a binary system, in which two stars circle around each other in an apparently never-ending cosmic ballet. But sometimes, things can go wrong. When the dancing stars are too close to each other, one of them can start devouring its partner. If the vampire star is a white dwarf â€" a burned-out star that was once like our Sun â€" this greed can lead to a cosmic catastrophe: the white dwarf explodes as a Type Ia supernova. ...> Full Article

SMART-1: Europe on the Moon, one year on (9/3/2007)

A year ago, as Europe reached the Moon for the first time, scientists on Earth eagerly watched SMART-1’s spectacular impact. New results from the impact analysis and from the instruments still keep coming. ...> Full Article

AKARI finishes its cool observations (9/2/2007)

International scientific satellite reaches the end of the major phase of its work ...> Full Article

HiRISE Camera Returns New View of Dark Pit on Mars (9/1/2007)

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) has confirmed that a dark pit seen on Mars in an earlier HiRISE image really is a vertical shaft that cuts through lava flow on the flank of the Arsia Mons volcano. Such pits form on similar volcanoes in Hawaii and are called "pit craters." ...> Full Article

The Highs And Lows Of Martian Water Vapour (8/31/2007)

Recent observations by instruments aboard Mars Express show peculiar behaviour by water vapour in the highest and lowest regions of Mars. ...> Full Article

Scientists Find Elusive Waves in Solar Corona (8/31/2007)

Scientists for the first time have observed elusive oscillations in the sun's corona, known as Alfvén waves, that transport energy outward from the surface of the sun. The discovery may give researchers more insight into solar magnetic fields, eventually leading to a better understanding of how the sun affects Earth's atmosphere and the entire solar system. ...> Full Article

Could Enceladus's Icy Plumes Pose A Hazard To Cassini? (8/30/2007)

On 12th March 2008, Cassini will swing by Saturn's moon Enceladus at an altitude of less than 100 kilometres at the point of closest approach. This will give scientists and unprecedented opportunity to study the plumes of water vapour emanating from the "tiger stripe" fissures near the moon's south pole, but it has also given the Cassini team pause for thought as to whether ice grains lofted by the jets could damage the spacecraft. ...> Full Article

Handling Turbulence On Titan And Earth (8/30/2007)

Ever spilled your drink on an airline due to turbulence? Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are finding new ways to understand the phenomenon - both on Earth and on Titan. ...> Full Article

White Dwarf Eats Red Giant For Breakfast (8/30/2007)

New, detailed observations of a supernova show evidence that a white dwarf star "fed" off a red giant to gain the critical mass needed for explosion. ...> Full Article

NASA Study will Help Stop Stowaways to Mars (8/30/2007)

NASA clean rooms, where scientists and engineers assemble spacecraft, have joined hot springs, ice caves, and deep mines as unlikely places where scientists have discovered ultra-hardy organisms collectively known as 'extremophiles'. Some species of bacteria uncovered in a recent NASA study have never been detected anywhere else. ...> Full Article

Researchers find absolutely nothing (8/30/2007)

Astronomers discover great gaping gash in the heavens ...> Full Article