Latest Astronomy Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using observations from an airborne observatory, NASA researchers have discovered new details on how massive stars form within a cloud of interstellar gas and dust. An emerging star known as G35 has been observed forming in an orderly process similar to the one undergone by smaller stars like our sun, according to the scientists’ report in the Astrophysical Journal. Lead author Yichen Zhang said the observations of G35 made with...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers report in The Astrophysical Journal that they have determined the positions of over 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. The group used the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope during their observations. This telescope can capture just as many observations of this group of galaxies in just a few hours as similar telescopes can in more than a decade. [ Video:...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of astronomers, led by Hugues Sana of the University of Amsterdam, has observed a binary star that potentially weighed 300 to 400 times the mass of our Sun at its birth. The present day combined mass of the two stars is between 200 and 300 times the solar mass, depending on its evolutionary stage. This makes it potentially the most massive binary star discovered to date. The findings of this study have been published in...
WASHINGTON, April 16, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers using the airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured the most detailed mid-infrared images yet of a massive star condensing within a dense cocoon of dust and gas. (Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The star is G35.20-0.74, commonly known as G35. It is one of the most massive known protostars and is located relatively close to Earth at a distance of...
BENTON HARBOR, Mich., April 16, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- The board of directors of Whirlpool Corporation (NYSE:WHR) declared today a 25 percent increase in the quarterly dividend on the company's common stock to 62.5 cents per share from 50 cents per share. The dividend is payable June 15, 2013, to stockholders of record at the close of business on May 17, 2013. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20040202/DETU004LOGO ) "Our actions have delivered a strong financial position...
WATCH VIDEO: [Swift's Christmas Burst From Blue Supergiant Star Explosion] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Researchers unwrapped a little more of the mystery surrounding a new type of powerful cosmic explosion, creating a new theory around the death of supergiant stars. These huge explosions create powerful blasts of high energy gamma rays, known as gamma-ray bursts. These larger blasts can last for several hours, compared to most gamma-ray bursts which rarely...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers, in collaboration with University of Leicester planetary scientists, has organized the largest ever observational campaign of Saturn's auroras. To expand our knowledge of the planet's northern lights, a host of space and ground-based telescopes will focus on the ringed gas giant for the month-long project. Scientists from the University's Department of Physics and Astronomy have worked with NASA...
WASHINGTON, April 15, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA will host a news briefing at 2 p.m. EDT, Thursday, April 18, to announce new discoveries from the agency's Kepler mission. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) The briefing will be held in the Syvertson Auditorium, Building N-201, at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and be broadcast live on NASA Television and on the agency's website. Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of...
ESA These colorful displays are produced when electrically charged particles traveling from the Sun in the solar wind are channeled along Earth’s magnetic field lines and strike atoms high in the atmosphere. Collisions with oxygen atoms typically generate green aurora, as seen here. The link between auroras and solar activity has been apparent for centuries, but only with the aid of satellites can scientists begin to decipher the physical mechanisms causing this spectacular...
ASTRON This week, a team of Dutch astronomers and engineers led by astronomer Joeri van Leeuwen (ASTRON) was awarded a grant to turn the new ‘Apertif' receivers on the Westerbork telescope into high-speed cameras. The receivers will expand the Westerbork field of view by over a factor 30 but the system is restricted to making images at the rate of one every second. The new upgrade increases this to 10,000 frames per second, allowing astronomers to survey the sky with greater sensitivity...
Latest Astronomy Reference Libraries
The prominent feature that allows for the existence of life on Earth is the Sun. Radiation from our closest star provides heat and energy to our planet, driving biological processes and providing the necessary conditions for liquid water to naturally exist. But our Sun is only but one star in this vast Universe. And as it turns out, most stars are quite different than the one that illuminates our day. For this reason, scientists have, for hundreds of years, attempted to study the other...
Image Caption: Artistic concept of a planetary system. Credit: Wikipedia/NASA/JPL-Caltech The term Astronomy encompasses a broad range of topics, including the study of stars, galaxies, and planets. In order to focus on the different areas of study, many subfields of astronomy emerge. One such area is the study of planets known, appropriately, as Planetary Astronomy. Observational Planetary Astronomy Even within the field of Planetary Astronomy, there are several divisions to...
Image Caption: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Each speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia What is Cosmology? I once commented to an acquaintance that I was fascinated by the field of Cosmology, and mused that if I had more time, I...
Image Caption: NGC 4414, a typical spiral galaxy in the constellation Coma Berenices, is about 56,000 light-years in diameter and approximately 60 million light-years distant. Credit: NASA/ESA/Wikipedia What is Astrophysics? For much of the modern age the term Astrophysics has been used synonymously with Astronomy. This interchange is so common that many textbooks even offer the two as having the same meaning. However, from a strictly historical perspective there are differences...
The Tropic of Capricorn, alternately called the Southern Tropic, is a marker of the most southerly latitude on the Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This occurs at the December solstice, when the southern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun at its maximum degree. It is one of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of the Earth. It presently lies 23 degrees 26’ 16’’ south of the Equator. Currently, the Tropic of Capricorn is drifting towards the north at...
![An Astronomer\](/media/gallery/spitzer-space-telescope-sirtf/thumbs/thumbs_746643main_pia17008_full.jpg "An Astronomer\")
