Astrophysics News
Courtesy of Science Daily

Rapid Supernova Could Be New Class Of Exploding Star Astronomers were looking through seven-year-old data when they chanced upon a very strange supernova that flashed and was gone in less than a month, when 3-4 months is typical. The unusually rapid supernova appears to match the predicted behavior of a thermonuclear explosion on a white dwarf that is drawing helium from its binary companion. This mechanism is quite different from the two standard types of supernovae. Publ.Date : Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST The CoRoT Satellite : 3 More Years To Hunt For Planets And To Listen To The Music Of Stars The operations of the CoRoT mission has been extended for three additional years, until 31 March 2013. Publ.Date : Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST Hubble Image Showcases Star Birth In M83, The Southern Pinwheel The spectacular new camera installed on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope during Servicing Mission 4 in May has delivered the most detailed view of star birth in the graceful, curving arms of the nearby spiral galaxy M83. Nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel, M83 is undergoing more rapid star formation than our own Milky Way galaxy, especially in its nucleus. Publ.Date : Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST Carbon Atmosphere Discovered On Neutron Star Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery resolves a ten-year mystery surrounding this object. In Earth's time frame, the estimated age of the neutron star in Cas A is only several hundred years, making it about ten times younger than other neutron stars with detected surface emission. Therefore, the Cas A neutron star gives a unique window into the early life of a cooling neutron star. Publ.Date : Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST Shedding Light On The Cosmic Skeleton Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed. Publ.Date : Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST Dark Matter And Dark Energy Make Up 95 Percent Of Universe, Detailed Measurements Reveal A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled. These measurements put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95 percent of everything in existence. Publ.Date : Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST Origin Of Cosmic Rays: VERITAS Telescopes Help Solve 100-year-old Mystery Nearly 100 years ago, scientists detected the first signs of cosmic rays -- subatomic particles that zip through space at nearly the speed of light. The most energetic cosmic rays hit with the punch of a 98-mph fastball, even though they are smaller than an atom. Astronomers questioned what force could accelerate particles to such a speed. New evidence from the VERITAS telescopes shows that cosmic rays likely are powered by exploding stars and stellar "winds." Publ.Date : Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST 'Ultra-primitive' Particles Found In Comet Dust Dust samples collected from the stratosphere have yielded an unexpectedly rich trove of relicts from the ancient cosmos, scientists report. The dust includes presolar grains and material from interstellar molecular clouds. This "ultra-primitive" material likely wafted into the atmosphere after the Earth passed through the trail of an Earth-crossing comet in 2003, giving scientists a rare opportunity to study cometary dust in the laboratory. Publ.Date : Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST NASA's Fermi Telescope Detects Gamma Rays From 'Star Factories' In Other Galaxies Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories. Publ.Date : Mon, 02 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST E-Infrastructures Give Real Boost To Virtual Observatories New tools and systems developed by European researchers are helping astronomers access data centres from anywhere in the world. From charting new stars to finding new meaning in old stellar objects, the result will be virtual observatories with very real impact. Publ.Date : Sun, 01 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST Opening Up A Colorful Cosmic Jewel Box The combination of images taken by three exceptional telescopes, the ESO Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal, the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO's La Silla observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, has allowed the stunning Jewel Box star cluster to be seen in a whole new light. Publ.Date : Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EDT New Celestial Map Gives Directions For GPS Many of us have been rescued from unfamiliar territory by directions from a Global Positioning System navigator. GPS satellites send signals to a receiver in your GPS navigator, which calculates your position based on the location of the satellites and your distance from them. The distance is determined by how long it took the signals from various satellites to reach your receiver. Publ.Date : Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT Physicist Makes New High-resolution Panorama Of Milky Way Cobbling together 3,000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Publ.Date : Thu, 29 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EDT Blast From The Past: Most Distant Stellar Object Gives Clues About Early Universe Astronomers studied the most distant object yet seen in the Universe, a giant stellar blast from more than 13 billion years ago, and learned tantalizing facts about the blast itself and the environment of the star that exploded in the early Universe. Publ.Date : Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT Gamma-ray Photon Race Ends In Dead Heat; Einstein Wins This Round A pair of gamma-ray photons -- one possessed of a million times the energy of the other -- arrived at virtually the same instant at NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after a 7.3-billion-year race across the universe. Some proponents of alternatives to Einstein's theory of gravity would have predicted that the more energetic would have been much farther behind the less energetic one. They were wrong -- Einstein wins this round. Publ.Date : Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:00:00 EDT World's Fastest Supercomputer Models Origins Of The Unseen Universe A new "Roadrunner Universe" model requires a petascale computer because, like the universe, it's mind-bendingly large. The model's basic unit is a particle with a mass of approximately one billion suns (in order to sample galaxies with masses of about a trillion suns), and it includes 64 billion and more of those particles. The model is one of the largest simulations of the distribution of matter in the universe, and aims to look at galaxy-scale mass concentrations above and beyond quantities seen in state-of-the-art sky surveys. Publ.Date : Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT Galaxy Cluster Smashes Distance Record The most distant galaxy cluster yet has been discovered by combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical and infrared telescopes. The cluster is located about 10.2 billion light years away, and is observed as it was when the universe was only about a quarter of its present age. Publ.Date : Fri, 23 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT Is Unknown Force In Universe Acting On Dark Matter? Astronomers have found an unexpected link between mysterious 'dark matter' and the visible stars and gas in galaxies that could revolutionize our current understanding of gravity. The finding suggests that an unknown force is acting on dark matter. Publ.Date : Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT Astronomers Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life. Publ.Date : Wed, 21 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EDT Towards Other Earths: 32 New Exoplanets Found Astronomers are reporting the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, using the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS -- the spectrograph of the European Southern Observatory's 3.6-meter telescope. The result increases the number of known low-mass planets by an impressive 30 percent. Publ.Date : Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:00:00 EDT How The Moon Produces Its Own Water The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface. Publ.Date : Mon, 19 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EDT New View Of The Heliosphere: Cassini Helps Redraw Shape Of Solar System The solar system, as defined by the heliosphere, the region of the sun's influence, may have a quite different shape than scientists had thought. Publ.Date : Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EDT Galactic Magnetic Fields May Control Boundaries Of Our Solar System Galactic magnetic fields had a far greater impact on Earth's history than previously conceived, and the future of our planet and others may depend, in part, on how the galactic magnetic fields change with time. Publ.Date : Sat, 17 Oct 2009 05:00:00 EDT Catching The Interstellar Wind: Spacecraft Finds Ribbon-like Structure At Edge Of Heliosphere NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer, or IBEX, spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy and sun. Results include the discovery of a narrow ribbon of bright details or emissions not resembling any of the current theoretical models of the interstellar boundary region. Publ.Date : Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT