Latest Astronomy Stories
[Watch Video: 2012 DA14 Trajectory] | [ Watch the Video: Asteroid 2012 DA14 To Whiz Past Earth Safely ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online You know the feeling of standing by a highway as an 18-wheeler rushes by, and you feel the rush of air from that vehicle slinging your hair into your face? Well, if it wasn't for the vacuum in space, then we would hypothetically be getting that rush as asteroid 2012 DA14 makes its nail-biting, close-approach of Earth this weekend....
[ Watch the Video: Fermi Proves Supernova Remnants Produce Cosmic Rays ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A thousand-year-old supernova has given the European Space Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) ample opportunity to gain some clues about the origins of cosmic rays. The new observations, reported in the journal Science today, suggest the presence of fast-moving particles in the supernova remnant. Over a thousand years ago, in 1006 AD, a new star was...
NASA Science Rewind to the late 1950s. The Soviet Union had just launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The United States, caught short, was scrambling to catch up, kick-starting a Cold War space race that would last for decades. Space was up for grabs, and it seemed like anything could happen. Into this void stepped the United Nations. In 1958, the General Assembly "recognizing the common interest of mankind in furthering the peaceful use of outer space ... and desiring to...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online There are small subsets of stars among the hundred billion in the Milky Way called ultra-cool dwarfs, which have a temperature below 2500 Kelvin. Both ultra-cool dwarfs and brown dwarfs exist at these lower temperatures. The lower temperatures indicate that these are some of the most ancient objects in our Galaxy, leading scientists to examine them for information on primitive chemical composition. The Gaia mission, which will be...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest a highly distorted supernova remnant may contain the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. The remnant appears to be the product of a rare explosion in which matter is ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The remnant, called W49B, is about a thousand years old as seen from...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A rare explosion from a rotating star may have created the most recent black hole formed in the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory claim that matter was ejected at high speeds along the poles of a rotating star, creating a supernova remnant, W49B, which may contain a young black hole. "W49B is the first of its kind to be discovered in the galaxy," said Laura Lopez, who led the study at the...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Click here to stream the “Supermassive Black Holes” podcast (Or right-click on the above link to download the file to your computer) Only a couple decades ago, the mere idea of supermassive black holes – those that are millions or billions of times more massive than our sun – seemed unthinkable to most astronomers. Now, however, we believe that these enormous objects lie at the center of nearly every galaxy in the...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] | [ Video 3 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image released by the European Space Observatory (ESO) illustrates the bright star cluster NGC 6520, located in one of the richest star fields in the sky. Astronomers using ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile took advantage of the Wide Field Imager on the telescope to snap the image. The image not only shows off NGC 6520, but also its neighbor, the strange dark cloud known as Barnard...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The rapidly expanding problem of obesity doesn't seem to just be limited to here on Earth, because new research published in the Astrophysical Journal suggests black holes are growing at larger rates than what had previously been thought possible Most galaxies have black holes at the center of them that can weigh anywhere from one million to one billion times as much as the Sun. The black hole found in the middle of our Milky Way...
Rayshell Clapper for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Did you know now anyone with Google Earth access – either via smartphone app or the website – can now check out Mars as well? That’s right: Google Earth has gone interplanetary. It now has an even better Google Earth Mars option. According to Daily Mail Online, users can view the planet’s surface in greater detail than ever before because of the high resolution images from NASA that are now being used by Google. These...
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...
