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Organic carbon from Mars, but not biological

Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen--the building blocks of all life on Earth--have been the targets of missions to Mars from Viking to the present day. While these molecules have previously been found in meteorites from Mars, scientists...

Tiny planet-finding mirrors borrow from Webb Telescope playbook

The Visible Nulling Coronagraph (VNC) combines an interferometer with a coronagraph to image and characterize Jovian-size planets. In this photo, Goddard scientists Rick Lyon (foreground) and Udayan Mallik (left), who are joined by Pete Petrone (right), an employee of Sigma Space Corporation in Lanham, Md., are monitoring the progress of wavefront control using the VNC, which is operating inside a vacuum tank.NASA's next flagship mission -- the James Webb Space Telescope -- will carry the largest primary mirror ever deployed. This segmented behemoth will unfold to 21.3 feet in diameter once...

Nomads of the galaxy

Recently, a study was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society proposing planets simply adrift in space may be something of a common phenomenon. Aptly titled "Nomads...

Herschel Space Observatory study reveals galaxy-packed filament

A McGill-led research team using the Herschel Space Observatory has discovered a giant, galaxy-packed filament ablaze with billions of new stars. The filament connects two clusters of galaxies that, along...

Baby galaxies grew up quickly

Researchers have studied 10 galaxies in the early universe by using quasars as light sources. In order to use quasars as light sources the quasar has to lie behind the galaxy you want to observe. By looking at the light from the distant quasar (A) that shines through the galaxy (B) on its way to Earth, researchers can determine which elements the galaxy contains from the light that is absorbed. This is seen as lines in the spectrum of the quasar.Baby galaxies from the young Universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research from the Niels Bohr Institute. This means that already in...

New IBEX data show heliosphere's long-theorized bow shock does not exist

New data from the IBEX spacecraft show that the heliosphere’s lower speed, combined with higher magnetic pressures found in the interstellar medium, prevent the formation of a bow shock, which for decades was thought to form ahead of the heliosphere as it moved through the galaxy. Instead, these factors combine to suggest the heliosphere creates more of a bow “wave” as it travels through space.New results from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) reveal that the bow shock, widely accepted by researchers to precede the heliosphere as it plows through tenuous gas and dust from...

Looking for Earths by looking for Jupiters

In the search for Earth-like planets, it is helpful to look for clues and patterns that can help scientist narrow down the types of systems where potentially habitable planets are...

Hubble to use moon as mirror to see Venus transit

This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon.This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our Moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image...

NASA's Chandra sees remarkable outburst from old black hole

An extraordinary outburst from a black hole -- where its X-ray output increased at least 3,000 times -- has been seen with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory in the galaxy M83. Chandra observed what is called a ULX, or ultraluminous X-ray source. The panel on the left features an optical view of the full M83 galaxy, while the right panel shows a close up of the region where the ULX was found with data from Chandra (pink) and Hubble (blue and yellow). The remarkable behavior of this ULX in M83 provides direct evidence for a population of older, volatile, stellar-mass black holes.An extraordinary outburst produced by a black hole in a nearby galaxy has provided direct evidence for a population of old, volatile stellar black holes. The discovery, made by astronomers...

4 white dwarf stars caught in the act of consuming 'Earth-like' exoplanets

The host star is running out of hydrogen in the core, swells up, and its surface becomes cooler. It is also losing mass, which causes the planets to move further out. The perturbation of the orbits may lead to collisions that will generate large amounts of rocky debris.University of Warwick astrophysicists have pinpointed four white dwarfs surrounded by dust from shattered planetary bodies which once bore striking similarities to the composition of Earth.

Old star, new trick

The Big Bang produced lots of hydrogen and helium and a smidgen of lithium. All heavier elements found on the periodic table have been produced by stars over the last...

Asteroid nudged by sunlight: Most precise measurement of Yarkovsky effect

These series of radar images of asteroid 1999 RQ36 were obtained by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., on Sept. 23, 1999.

Study shows how to keep a Mars tumbleweed rover moving on rocky terrain

This is a model of a tumbleweed rover.New research from North Carolina State University shows that a wind-driven "tumbleweed" Mars rover would be capable of moving across rocky Martian terrain -- findings that could also help the...

The older we get, the less we know (cosmologically)

The universe is a marvelously complex place, filled with galaxies and larger-scale structures that have evolved over its 13.7-billion-year history. Those began as small perturbations of matter that grew over...

3-telescope interferometry allows astrophysicists to observe how black holes are fueled

This is an artist's view of a dust torus surrounding the accretion disk and the central black hole in active galactic nuclei.By combining the light of three powerful infrared telescopes, an international research team has observed the active accretion phase of a supermassive black hole in the center of a galaxy...

Unseen planet revealed by its gravity

Using Kepler Telescope transit data of planet “b”, scientists predicted that a second planet “c” about the mass of Saturn orbits the distant star KOI-872. This research, led by Southwest Research Institute and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, is providing evidence of an orderly arrangement of planets orbiting KOI-872, not unlike our own solar system.More than a 150 years ago, before Neptune was ever sighted in the night sky, French mathematician Urbain Le Verrier predicted the planet's existence based on small deviations in the...

Technology developed at Caltech measures Martian sand movement

This is a perspective view of Nili Patera dune field: The HiRISE image has been draped over a digital elevation model of Mars. Colors correspond to the amplitude of the ripple's displacement extracted by image correlation between two HiRISE observations separated by 105 days. Cool colors (blue) correspond to less than 75 cm of displacement whereas warm colors (red) correspond to 4.5+ meters.Last year, images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured sand dunes and ripples moving across the surface of Mars -- observations that challenged previously held beliefs that there was not...

1 supernova type, 2 different sources

The Tycho supernova remnant is the result of a Type Ia supernova explosion. The explosion was observed by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe in 1572. More than 400 years later, the ejecta from that explosion has expanded to fill a bubble 55 light-years across. In this image, low-energy X-rays (red) show expanding debris from the supernova explosion and high energy X-rays (blue) show the blast wave - a shell of extremely energetic electrons.The exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovae serve an important role in measuring the universe, and were used to discover the existence of dark energy. They're bright enough to...

Ancient volcanic blast provides more evidence of water on early Mars

This bomb sag on the surface of Mars was created during a volcanic blast approximately 3.5 billion years ago. Assistant professor Josef Dufek has replicated the sag in his lab while studying the possibility of water and atmospheric conditions of early Mars.The atmosphere of Mars is less than 1 percent the density of Earth's. It's one of the reasons liquid water covers much of our planet but cannot exist on the...

Science nugget: Lightning signature could help reveal the solar system's origins

Lightning lights up the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during thunderstorms on Monday, Sept. 27, 2010.Every second, lightning flashes some 50 times on Earth. Together these discharges coalesce and get stronger, creating electromagnetic waves circling around Earth, to create a beating pulse between the ground...

Life-size 3-D hologram-like telepods may revolutionize videoconferencing in the future

A Queen's University researcher has created a Star Trek-like human-scale 3D videoconferencing pod that allows people in different locations to video conference as if they are standing in front of...

Record-breaking radio waves discovered from ultra-cool star

Penn State University astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emissions from the ultra-cool star J1047+21, known as a brown dwarf, which is not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest temperature at which radio waves had been detected from a star. The detection technique may be used to hunt for giant planets outside our solar system. The leader of the discovery team also led the discovery of the first planets ever found outside our solar system. This image is an artist's impression of a brown dwarf.Penn State University astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emissions from an ultra-cool star, not much warmer than the planet Jupiter,...

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