Home>Topics>Astronomy & Space

Popular Science articles about Astronomy & Space

New focus on the moon

This Locator Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera's Narrow Angle Camera image shows the position of the first two images. This image is 253x1000 pixels or 3,542 meters (2.2 miles) wide by 14,000 meters (8.7 miles) long.
Related science article

NASA's Fermi Telescope reveals a population of radio-quiet gamma-ray pulsars

A new class of pulsars detected by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is solving the mystery of previously unidentified gamma-ray sources and helping scientists understand the mechanisms behind pulsar emissions.

Mars data published in Science this week

Four papers in the journal Science this week offer new details about the history of water on Mars, gleaned from the 2008 NASA Phoenix Mars Mission that was operated from...

University of Hawaii at Manoa astronomers discover pair of solar systems in the making

Left: This is a Submillimeter Array image of 253-1536 taken at a wavelength of 880 microns. The mass of the disk on the left is 70 times the mass of Jupiter, while the one on the right is 20 Jupiter masses. Right: The optical image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the shadow of the large disk, but the smaller disk is obscured in the glare of the brighter star.Two University of Hawai'i at Mānoa astronomers have found a binary star-disk system in which each star is surrounded by the kind of dust disk that is frequently the precursor...

Intense heat killed the Universe's would-be galaxies, researchers say

Our Milky Way galaxy only survived because it was already immersed in a large clump of dark matter which trapped gases inside it, scientists led by Durham University's Institute for...

Space shuttle science shows how 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused by a comet

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The...

New instrument has potential to detect water deep underground on Mars

These images show the concept for a flight version of the Mars Time Domain Electromagnetic Sounder (MTDEM), which uses induction to detect groundwater up to 5 km deep. These illustrations show the MTDEM launcher in its stowed (cruise) and deployed (landed) configurations; spooling projectiles are then ejected using compressed gas, forming a large wire loop on the planet's surface.With the whoosh of compressed gas and the whir of unspooling wire, a team of Boulder scientists and engineers tested a new instrument prototype that might be used to detect...

Jets on Saturn's moon Enceladus not geysers from underground ocean, says study

Water vapor jets spewing from Saturn's icy moon, Enceladus, are not the result of geysers from an underground ocean as envisioned by some planetary scientists but may be caused by water evaporation or ice vaporization, according to a new University of Colorado at Boulder study.Water vapor jets that spew from the surface of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus are not really geysers from an underground ocean as initially envisioned by planetary scientists, according to a...

Magnetic field on bright star Vega

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing the first detection of a magnetic field on the star Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Using the high-sensitivity NARVAL spectropolarimeter installed...

Herschel's daring test: A glimpse of things to come

Red, green and blue correspond to the 160-micron, 100-micron and 70-micron wavelength bands of the Herschel’s Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer, PACS. Glowing light from clouds of dust and gas around and between the stars is visible clearly. These clouds are a reservoir of raw material for ongoing star formation in this galaxy. Blue indicates regions of warm dust that is heated by young stars, while the colder dust shows up in red.Herschel opened its 'eyes' on 14 June and the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer obtained images of M51, 'the whirlpool galaxy' for a first test observation. Scientists obtained images in...

Scientists create first comprehensive computer model of sunspots

The interface between a sunspot's central and outer regions shows a complex structure.In a breakthrough that will help scientists unlock mysteries of the sun and its impacts on Earth, scientists have created the first-ever comprehensive computer model of sunspots. The resulting visuals...

Related science article

VLBA locates superenergetic bursts near giant black hole

Using a worldwide combination of diverse telescopes, astronomers have discovered that a giant galaxy's bursts of very high energy gamma rays are coming from a region very close to the supermassive black hole at its core. The discovery provides important...

Related science articles

Many characteristics of Mars, including ice, are similar to Earth, paper says

Mars gets as far as 250 million miles away, but many parts of it closely resemble places on Earth, including its landscape, history of water, soil and even its weather,...

Astronomer's new guide to the galaxy: Largest map of cold dust revealed

This is a color-composite image of part of the Galactic Plane seen by the ATLASGAL survey, divided into sections. In this image, the ATLASGAL submillimeter-wavelength data are shown in red, overlaid on a view of the region in infrared light, from the Midcourse Space Experiment in green and blue. The total size of the image is approximately 42 degrees by 1.75 degrees. Some of the most prominent features visible in the image are (from left to right, top to bottom): - Messier 20 (the Trifid Nebula): A nebula containing an open cluster of stars as well as a stellar nursery. The name “Trifid” refers to the way that dense dust appears to divide it into three lobes at visible wavelengths. - Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2): One of the largest clouds of molecular gas in the Milky Way, this dense region lies close to the Galactic Centre and is rich in many different interstellar molecules. - Galactic Centre: The centre of the Milky Way, home to a supermassive black hole more than four million times the mass of our Sun. It is about 25 000 light-years from Earth. - NGC 6357: A diffuse nebula containing the open cluster Pismis 24, home to several very massive stars. - NGC 6334: An emission nebula also known as the “Cat’s Paw Nebula”. - RCW 120: A region where an expanding bubble of ionised gas about ten light-years across is causing the surrounding material to collapse into dense clumps that are the birthplaces of new stars. - The Norma Arm: The region of somewhat brighter emission extending over about 10 degrees on the right-hand side of the image corresponds to the position of the Norma Arm, one of the spiral arms of the Milky Way.This new guide for astronomers, known as the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy (ATLASGAL) shows the Milky Way in submillimetre-wavelength light (between infrared light and radio waves...

Largest ever survey of very distant galaxy clusters completed

This is one of the most distant galaxy clusters ever discovered.An international team of researchers led by a UC Riverside astronomer has completed the largest ever survey designed to find very distant clusters of galaxies.

Hand-held aerosol sensors help fill crucial data gap over oceans

Since NASA researchers began assembling the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) in the 1990s, the worldwide network of ground-based aerosol sensors has grown to 400 sites across seven continents.

Related science article

Milky Way's super-efficient particle accelerators caught in the act

Image of part of a stellar remnant whose explosion was recorded in 185 A.D. By studying this remnant in detail, a team of astronomers was able to solve the mystery of the Milky Way’s super-efficient particle accelerators. The team shows that the shock wave visible in this area is very efficient at accelerating particles and the energy used in this process matches the number of cosmic rays observed on Earth. North is toward the top right and east to the top left. The image is about six arc minutes across.Thanks to a unique "ballistic study" that combines data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have now solved a long-standing mystery of the Milky Way's...

Galaxies coming of age in cosmic blobs

This composite image shows one of the brightest objects observed in a study of 29 blobs located in a single field. Glowing hydrogen gas in the blob is shown by a Lyman-alpha optical image (colored yellow) from the Subaru telescope. A galaxy located in the blob is visible in a broadband optical image (white) from the Hubble Space Telescope and an infrared image from the Spitzer Space Telescope (red). Finally, the Chandra X-ray Observatory image (blue) shows evidence for a growing supermassive black hole in the center of the galaxy. Radiation and outflows from this active black hole are lighting up and heating the gas in the blob.The "coming of age" of galaxies and black holes has been pinpointed, thanks to new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. This discovery helps resolve the true...

Campaign donors survey: Women and young people behind Obama's small donor success

More individuals gave more money to candidates for federal office, national and state party committees, and political action committees or other interest groups in 2007󈝴 than in any previous election....

Related science article

Better looks at Mars minerals for ASU instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter

Pastel colors swirl across Mars, revealing differences in the composition and nature of the surface in this recently taken false-color infrared THEMIS image. Showing an area 31.9 kilometers (19.8 miles) by 88.3 kilometers (54.9 miles) in the southern highlands, the image is a result of the earlier orbit time for Mars Odyssey and THEMIS. In the image, dark areas mark exposures of relatively cold ground with abundant bare rock, while warmer basaltic sand covers the light blue-green regions. Reddish areas likely have a higher silica content, due either to a different volcanic composition or to weathering.A slow drift in the orbit of NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft that mission controllers started nine months ago is now giving an ASU instrument a better and more sensitive view...

IBEX spacecraft detects fast neutral hydrogen coming from the moon

NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer has made the first detection of neutral atoms coming from the Moon (background image). The color-coded data toward the bottom shows the neutral particles and geometry measured at the Moon on Dec. 3, 2008. IBEX spins at four rotations per minute with its field of view sweeping over the moon each spin over about 10 hours. The neutral atoms are summed in 6 degree bins with the lunar direction indicated by the white arrow. IBEX detects particles produced by reflection and neutralization of the incident solar wind protons at toward the spacecraft. The Earth, moon and spacecraft shown toward the top are not to scale.NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made the first observations of very fast hydrogen atoms coming from the moon, following decades of speculation and searching for their existence.

World's fastest and most sensitive astronomical camera

The CCD220 detector at the core of the OCam camera has 240 x 240 pixels and has a readout noise ten times smaller than detectors in current use, making it ideal for the faint light camera systems to be used on the second generation of Very Large Telescope instruments. It was developed by the British manufacturer e2v technologies."The performance of this breakthrough camera is without an equivalent anywhere in the world. The camera will enable great leaps forward in many areas of the study of the Universe,"...

More news about Astronomy & Space

Space News in Images

Breaking science news from the newsfeed about Astronomy & Space