Latest Astronomy Stories
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Efficiency experts and green technology proponents can now look to the heavens for inspiration, as astronomers have identified a galaxy that forms stars at almost 100 percent efficiency. According to a new report in Astrophysical Journal Letters, telltale signs from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the Hubble Space Telescope and the Plateau de Bure interferometer at the Institut de Radioastronomie Millimétrique...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) says it has unraveled the mystery as to the origin of water observed in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. ESA's Herschel space observatory found evidence that the water in this part of Jupiter's atmosphere was delivered by the dramatic impact of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 in July 1994. During this collision, a string of 21 comet fragments pounded into the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, leaving dark scars...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A dazzling display of light appeared over Argentina on Sunday, April 21 and was captured on video by a concert goer filming the band playing on stage. In the video a giant fireball can be seen in the background lighting up the night sky as it exploded high in the atmosphere. The flash of light only appeared for a few seconds before it was gone; but the incident, which was witnessed by thousands of Argentinians, left most wondering...
Company Accepted Its First Mira Award from Techpoint, Honoring Its ASCENT(TM) Software-as-a-Service for Analytical Laboratories Indianapolis (PRWEB) April 22, 2013 TechPoint, Indiana’s technology growth initiative, recognized Indigo Biosystems (Indigo), a provider of scientific software for analytical laboratories, as one of Indiana’s high-tech success stories during its annual Mira Awards gala presented by BKD CPAs & Advisors at the JW Marriott in downtown Indianapolis on April...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA has released a video of the unbroken coverage of the sun for the past three years, taken by its Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The spacecraft's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly snaps a shot of the sun every twelve seconds in ten different wavelengths. The latest video shows the past three years of the sun at a pace of two images per day. [ Watch the Video: Three Years With Solar Dynamics Observatory ] The video, released...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) recorded a coronal mass ejection (CME) on Saturday April 20, 2013, at 2:54 a.m. EDT. That was only to be the first of three such events over the course of the weekend. CME’s, solar phenomena that send billions of tons of solar particles and radiation speeding through space at over 500 miles per second, have the potential to affect communication systems and electronics here and in orbit...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Two tiny grains of silica discovered in primitive meteorites may have originated from the ancient supernova responsible for the formation of the solar system, according to new research published in the May 1 edition of Astrophysical Journal Letters. The silica grains were discovered by scientists from Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) and the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, and was said to be “surprising”...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online A SETI Institute scientist has been chosen to lead the design, development and operations of the data processing center for NASA’s next-generation successor to the Kepler Mission, the Mountain View, California-based organization announced on Friday. Jon M. Jenkins, a senior researcher at the Carl Sagan Center of the SETI Institute, will oversee operations of the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission’s Data...
[WATCH VIDEO: Comet ISON Meteor Shower] redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While Comet ISON’s eagerly anticipated encounter with the sun won’t even happen until November, it seems likely the fireball is already prepping a special encore performance for stargazers here on Earth. In January, the US space agency’s Swift spacecraft observed the comet ISON while it was still near the orbit of Jupiter. Even then, it had already become extremely active, with...
VIDEO: [Zooming Into The Horsehead Nebula] | VIDEO: [The Gaseous Landscape Of The Horsehead Nebula] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 23rd year in orbit, and to commemorate the veteran observatory, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released an amazing image of the Horsehead Nebula. For 23 years, the Hubble Space Telescope has been making cutting-edge observations of several of the sky's best objects....
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\")
