A new technique using near-infrared images, obtained with ESO's 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT), allows astronomers to see through the opaque dust lanes of the giant cannibal galaxy Centaurus A, unveiling its "last meal" in unprecedented detail -- a smaller spiral galaxy, currently twisted and warped. This amazing image also shows thousands of star clusters, strewn like glittering gems, churning inside Centaurus A.
Publ.Date : Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST
The Sun is a bubbling mass. Packages of gas rise and sink, lending the sun its grainy surface structure, its granulation. Dark spots appear and disappear, clouds of matter dart up -- and behind the whole thing are the magnetic fields, the engines of it all. The SUNRISE balloon-borne telescope has now delivered images that show the complex interplay on the solar surface to a level of detail never before achieved.
Publ.Date : Sat, 14 Nov 2009 05:00:00 EST
The argument that the moon is a dry, desolate place no longer holds water. Preliminary data from the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, indicates that the mission successfully uncovered water during the Oct. 9, 2009 impacts into the permanently shadowed region of Cabeus cater near the moon's south pole.
Publ.Date : Fri, 13 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST
Is there such a thing as "weather" on Mars? There are some doubts, considering the planet's atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as that of the Earth. Mars, however, definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and out-of-this-world dust storms. A professor of atmospheric sciences now hopes to analyze and forecast Martian weather.
Publ.Date : Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST
When Europe's comet chaser Rosetta swings by Earth on Nov. 13 for a critical gravity assist, tracking data will be collected to precisely measure the satellite's change in orbital energy. The results could help unravel a cosmic mystery that has stumped scientists for two decades.
Publ.Date : Fri, 13 Nov 2009 02:00:00 EST
The Universe's infant galaxies enjoyed rapid growth spurts forming stars like our Sun at a rate of up to 50 stars a year, according to scientists.
Publ.Date : Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:00:00 EST
When NASA's space shuttle Atlantis launches for the International Space Station on Nov. 16 it will carry a butterfly experiment that will be monitored by thousands of K-12 students across the nation.
Publ.Date : Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST
Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet. Scientists now suggest that water was not part of the Earth's initial inventory but stems from the turbulence caused in the outer solar system by giant planets. Ice-covered asteroids thus reached the Earth around one hundred million years after the birth of the planets.
Publ.Date : Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:00:00 EST
While astronomers have studied lightweight and heavyweight black holes for decades, the evidence for black holes with intermediate masses has been much harder to come by. Now, astronomers find that an X-ray source in galaxy NGC 5408 represents one of the best cases for a middleweight black hole to date.
Publ.Date : Tue, 10 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST
A new image from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter shows channels to the southeast of Hale crater on southern Mars. Taken by the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera, this view covers an area about 3 kilometers (2 miles) wide.
Publ.Date : Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST
A NASA spacecraft gliding over the battered surface of Mercury for the second time this year has revealed more previously unseen real estate on the innermost planet. The probe also has produced several science firsts and is returning hundreds of new photos and measurements of the planet's surface, atmosphere and magnetic field.
Publ.Date : Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST
Winter images of NASA's Phoenix Lander showing the lander shrouded in dry-ice frost on Mars have been captured with the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment, or HiRISE camera, aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
Publ.Date : Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 EST
Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang. The finding is the first age-confirmation of a so-called dropout galaxy at that distant time and pinpoints when an era called the reionization epoch likely began.
Publ.Date : Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:00:00 EST
Before our planets found their way to the stable orbits they circle in today, they wiggled and jostled about like unsettled children. Now, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a young star with evidence for the same kind of orbital hyperactivity. Young planets circling the star are thought to be disturbing smaller comet-like bodies, causing them to collide and kick up a huge halo of dust.
Publ.Date : Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST
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 : Sun, 08 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST
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
Until Oct. 24, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover had gone more than six months without an episode of amnesia-like symptoms like those that appeared on four occasions earlier this year. In these amnesia events, Spirit fails to record data from the day's activities onto the type of computer memory -- non-volatile "flash" memory -- that can retain the data when the rover powers down for its energy-conserving periods of "sleep."
Publ.Date : Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:00:00 EST
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
Scientists argue that human missions to Mars, as well as all other long-term space flights might be compromised by microbial hitchhikers, such as bacteria. That's because long-term space travel packs a one-two punch to astronauts: first it appears to weaken their immune systems; and second, it increases the virulence and growth of microbes.
Publ.Date : Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT
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
During flights simulating the moon's low gravity, researchers find that sifters can separate soil particles and produce the best feedstock for an oxygen generator. Scientists are designing and testing components of the generator, which would provide oxygen needed for a lunar or Martian outpost.
Publ.Date : Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:00:00 EDT
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
NASA's Ares I-X test rocket lifted off Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a two-minute powered flight. The test flight lasted about six minutes from its launch from the newly-modified Launch Complex 39B until splash down of the rocket's booster stage nearly 150 miles down range. The 327-foot tall Ares I-X test vehicle produced 2.6 million pounds of thrust to accelerate the rocket to nearly 3 g's and Mach 4.76, just shy of hypersonic speed. It capped its easterly flight at a sub-orbital altitude of 150,000 feet after the separation of its first stage, a four-segment solid rocket booster.
Publ.Date : Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EDT
An armada of robots may one day fly above the mountain tops of Saturn's moon Titan, cross its vast dunes and sail in its liquid lakes.
Publ.Date : Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT
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