Latest Astronomy Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Within a span of three minutes, a star in the Usra Major constellation less than 16 light-years from Earth gave off a massive flare, making the object 15 times brighter than normal, according to a new report in the journal Astrophysics. The star, known as WX UMa, is a so-called flare star, a class of stars which can become 100 times or more brighter within a few seconds or minutes. These flares appear to be randomly occurring, and...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Moon appears to be in a nearly circular orbit around the Earth. But that word "nearly" means that there are slight variations in its motion across the heavens. As it turns out, the distance from the Earth to the Moon varies by about 30,000 miles. This sounds like a lot, but it only represents about a 6-7 percent deviation from the average distance between the two bodies. On Earth, the difference between when the Moon...
“Bright Hole Cosmos” will be featured in the upcoming National Education Book Exhibit. QUEBEC (PRWEB) June 14, 2013 In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is in fact expanding at enormous speed. This revolutionary discovery further supported the Big Bang theory which would, to this day, be the prevailing paradigm in cosmology. Author Andre Trepanier is not totally satisfied with this cosmological model and in his quest for answers he discovered a defendable alternative...
John P. Millis, PhD for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists continue the search to identify the nature of dark matter that seems to pervade the Universe. Since by its very nature it does not interact well – or perhaps at all – with electromagnetic radiation, direct detection of this mysterious form of matter has proven elusive. Despite this obstacle, astronomers have become convinced of its existence because of how it can be ‘seen’ to interact with normal, luminous...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope say they have discovered evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles away from its host star. The exoplanet is under construction about 176 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Hydra the Sea Serpent. The suspected planet is orbiting the diminutive red dwarf TW Hydrae. "It's so intriguing to see a system like this," said John Debes of the Space Telescope Science...
ASTRON An international team of scientists led by astronomer Adam Deller (ASTRON) have used the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to set a new distance accuracy record, pegging a pulsar called PSR J2222-0137 at 871.4 light-years from Earth. They did this by observing the object over a two-year period to detect its parallax, the slight shift in apparent position against background objects when viewed from opposite ends of Earth's orbit around the Sun. With an uncertainty less than four...
WASHINGTON, June 13, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles away from its star, a finding that may challenge current theories about planet formation. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Of the almost 900 planets outside our solar system that have been confirmed to date, this is the first to be found at such a great distance from its star. The...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered an unprecedented number of black holes in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), one of the Milky Way’s nearest cosmic neighbors, using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. By analyzing more than 150 Chandra observations taken over 13 years, the research team has identified 26 black hole candidates. This is the largest number discovered to date in a galaxy outside our own. Many scientists consider...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A major field of study in astronomy seeks to understand how galaxies form and evolve. One advantage that we possess is that as we study the light from the most distant galaxies, we are effectively looking back in time, seeing the oldest galaxies in the Universe when they were still young. But there is a problem: the farther away the galaxies are, the more difficult they are to study. This is the issue faced by astronomers...
WASHINGTON, June 12, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unprecedented bonanza of black holes in the Andromeda Galaxy, one of the nearest galaxies to the Milky Way. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Using more than 150 Chandra observations, spread over 13 years, researchers identified 26 black hole candidates, the largest number to date, in a galaxy outside our own. Many consider...
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...
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