Latest Astronomical surveys Stories

Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst, spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life. The star, catalogued as WISE J180956.27-330500.2, was discovered in images taken during the WISE survey in 2010, the most detailed infrared survey to date of the entire celestial sky....

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Images from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) reveal an old star in the throes of a fiery outburst and spraying the cosmos with dust. The findings offer a rare, real-time look at the process by which stars like our sun seed the universe with building blocks for other stars, planets and even life. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The star, catalogued as WISE J180956.27-330500.2, was...

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) suggest in a new study that the heavens could be teeming with “nomad planets,” wandering through space instead of orbiting around host stars. In fact, say the researchers, there could be 100,000 times more of these planets in the Milky Way alone than there are stars. And if observations confirm this estimate, it could affect the current theories of planet formation and change our understanding of the...

Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Arizona have released the largest data set ever collected that documents the brightening and dimming of stars and other celestial objects—two hundred million in total. The night sky is filled with objects like asteroids that dash across the sky and others—like exploding stars and variable stars—that flash, dim, and brighten. Studying such phenomena can help astronomers better understand the...

[ Watch the Video ] Planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception An international team, including three astronomers from the European Southern Observatory (ESO), has used the technique of gravitational microlensing to measure how common planets are in the Milky Way. After a six-year search that surveyed millions of stars, the team concludes that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The results will appear in the journal Nature on 12 January 2012....

WASHINGTON, May 18, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers, including a NASA-funded team member, have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds probably were ejected from developing planetary systems. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The discovery is based on a joint Japan-New Zealand survey that scanned the center of the Milky Way galaxy during...

Astronomers across the globe can now sift through hundreds of millions of galaxies, stars and asteroids collected in the first bundle of data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission."Starting today thousands of new eyes will be looking at WISE data, and I expect many surprises," said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the mission's principal investigator.WISE launched into space on Dec. 14, 2009 on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared light with greatly...

In the outer reaches of our solar system lies a mysterious region far more remote and difficult to explore than the Australian outback. It remains the only part of our solar system not visited by spacecraft. Called the Kuiper Belt, this area beyond Neptune is home to the dwarf planets Pluto, Eris, Makemake, and Haumea. It also harbors thousands of smaller objects that form a second, icy asteroid belt (or more appropriately, comet belt). In this realm of perpetual twilight, the distant sun...

Astronomers have released the largest digital, color image of the universe ever recorded--a mosaic created from millions of 2.8 megapixel images recorded over the past decade.The image, which was unveiled during the 217th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Seattle, Washington on Tuesday, was captured and assembled by researchers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).SDSS-III, as it has been dubbed, is a full color representation of the night sky that has a...

Is the expansion of the universe accelerating for some unknown reason? This is one of the mysteries plaguing astrophysics, and somewhere in distant galaxies are yet-unseen supernovae that may hold the key. Now, thanks to a telescope calibrated by scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Harvard University and the University of Hawaii, astrophysicists can be more certain of one day obtaining an accurate answer.The NIST scientists traveled to the summit of...