Latest Astronomy Stories
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Prior to the Apollo Moon missions, scientists conjectured that the Moon would be extremely dry, that even below the surface of the Magnificent Desolation little or no water would be present. But the rocks brought back by the lunar explorers revealed that the Moon, while still dry compared to Earth, contained a surprising amount of water. Furthermore, the composition of the Moon led scientists to the current Big Impact...
WASHINGTON, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found the building blocks for Earth-sized planets in an unlikely place -- the atmospheres of a pair of burned-out stars called white dwarfs. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) These dead stars are located 150 light-years from Earth in a relatively young star cluster, Hyades, in the constellation Taurus. The star cluster is only 625 million years old. The white dwarfs are...
SALT LAKE CITY, May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO), today announced that Shane Robison, the company's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President, will participate in the Tech Talk with Technology Insights Research webcast today, Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 9 a.m. (PT). Mr. Robison will be joined by Fusion-io's Chief Technology Officer, Pankaj Mehra, and the company's Senior Vice President of Products, Gary Orenstein. A live webcast of the presentation will be...
[ Watch the Video: What is a Solar Eclipse? ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online This afternoon and evening, astronomy fans in the US will have the opportunity to view the Annular Solar Eclipse taking place in Australia from their couch. Slooh said it will be offering people the chance to see the solar eclipse live, starting at 5:30 p.m. eastern time. Tonight, the Moon's shadow will start to make its way across Australia towards eastern Papua New Guinea, creating a...
Watch the video “Intergalactic Clouds Lurk Between Nearby Galaxies" John P. Millis, PhD for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online As we gaze into space beyond the confines of our own Milky Way, we see a Universe filled with galaxies. But what scientists have come to realize is that the emptiness that spans between these giant pools of stars is not empty at all, but rather is filled with massive amounts of gas. In fact, these gas reservoirs can sometimes outweigh the galaxies...
[WATCH VIDEO: Space Warps Gravitational Lensing Animation] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Volunteers are being summoned to help astronomers find "space warps," leading to the discovery of faraway objects. Space warps, more commonly known as "gravitational lenses," allow objects in space to act as a giant lens to other objects even farther away. Studies have found that the human brain is much better at identifying lenses than current computer algorithms, so...
Square Kilometre Array Less than a year after the decision to site the revolutionary Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in both Southern Africa and Australia, the SKA Organisation has opened its new international headquarters. In front of an invited audience of local and global dignitaries, scientists and engineers, the UK Minister for Universities and Science the Rt. Hon. David Willetts MP recently opened the building which will be home to the team managing the construction, design and...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel spacecraft has revealed that the supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy is about to get a taste of some hot molecular gas. Sagittarius A has a mass of about four million times that of our Sun and sits about 26,000 light-years away from us. It is a few hundred times closer to us than any other galaxy with an active black hole at its center, making it ideal for studying these...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online In addition to the eight beloved planets circling our Sun, our galaxy is literally teeming with an enormous variety of planets. More than 800 of the so-called exoplanets have been identified circling stars beyond our solar system. And several different “species” of exoplanets have been discovered as well, including so-called ‘roasters’ or ‘hot Jupiters,’ which are gas giants like our own Jupiter that orbit closely to their...
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., May 7, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Rigel Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq:RIGL) today reported financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2013. For the first quarter of 2013, Rigel reported a net loss of $25.6 million, or $0.29 per share, compared to a net loss of $23.2 million, or $0.32 per share, in the first quarter of 2012. Weighted average shares outstanding for the first quarters of 2013 and 2012 were 87.1 million and 71.4 million, respectively....
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...
