Latest Astronomy Stories
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have blended science, technology and art to create a unique new website that allows people to listen to original musical compositions crafted from cosmic x-rays. The Star Songs website was published by research associate Gerhard Sonnert, who worked with University of Glasgow postdoctoral student Wanda Diaz-Merced and composer Volkmar Studtrucker on the project....
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Approximately 80 percent of all unidentifiable millimeter wave signals emitted in the universe actually originate from galaxies, according to new research published in Saturday’s edition of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Based on observations collected using Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) telescopes, professor Kouji Ohta and postdoctoral researcher Bunyo Hatsukade of Kyoto University in Japan and their...
Star party and presentation on planet hunting are FREE and open to all. WASHINGTON, May 31, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The American Astronomical Society (AAS) is inviting the public to view Saturn through a telescope and to hear a special presentation on "citizen science" during its early-June meeting at the Indiana Convention Center (100 S. Capitol Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46225), which will attract more than 500 space scientists and science educators. Members of the AAS and...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Researchers from Purdue University and MIT have solved the long-standing mystery of why the moon’s gravitational force is stronger in some areas than in others. This irregular gravitational force has been observed ever since the first satellites were sent to the moon, when orbiting probes would pass over certain craters and impact basins, and periodically swerve off course before plunging toward the lunar surface and then...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) is racing toward an uncomfortably close rendezvous with the Sun, according to a new series of images from the Gemini Earth Observatory. Comet ISON might present a stunning sight in the twilight sky of late November that will remain easily visible, even brilliant, into early December. Gemini’s time-sequence images span from early February through May 2013, showing the comet’s remarkable activity despite its...
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Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Once considered to be an afterthought when it came to Saturn’s moons, scientists now believe Dione likely had an active geological history after analyzing data sent back from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. "A picture is emerging that suggests Dione could be a fossil of the wondrous activity Cassini discovered spraying from Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus or perhaps a weaker copycat Enceladus," said Cassini team leader Bonnie Buratti of...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Using the orbiting Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), NASA scientists have been able to identify and categorize 28 new asteroid families found in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, the space agency announced. Infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting section of the survey, called NEOWISE, allowed scientists to spot and sort thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families. "NEOWISE has given...
WASHINGTON, May 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families. The snapshots also helped place thousands of...
Nine Times the Size of a Cruise Ship: Viewing Possible from Chabot Space & Science Center OAKLAND, Calif., May 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Friday, May 31 at 1:59pm (PDT) Asteroid 1998 QE2 will cruise 3.6 million miles from Earth, approximately 15 times the distance between the moon and Earth. The distance of the asteroid is not particularly impressive as it will not be especially close. But what it lacks in distance it compensates for in size. At about 1.6 miles across,...
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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