Latest Astrophysics Stories
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For the first time, scientists from the international Cassini spacecraft have detected subatomic particles that have been accelerated to ultra-high energies in a blast of solar wind around Saturn, hinting at the possibility that the ringed planet may have experienced the aftermath of a supernova. According to a report by the European Space Agency (ESA) that appeared recently in the journal Nature Physics, this acceleration may be the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A research collaboration between Case Western University and Weizmann Institute of Science has used modified laws of gravity to closely predict a key property measured in faint dwarf galaxies that are satellites of the nearby giant spiral galaxy Andromeda. The study centers around the property of velocity dispersion, which is the average velocity of objects within a galaxy relative to each other. Velocity dispersion is by used by...
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A new study using observations from NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope reveals the first clear-cut evidence the expanding debris of exploded stars produces some of the fastest-moving matter in the universe. This discovery is a major step toward understanding the origin of cosmic rays, one of Fermi's primary mission goals. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "Scientists have been trying to find the...
[ 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...
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...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online To study charge exchange, a poorly understood phenomenon that occurs when the solar wind collides with Earth's exosphere and neutral gas in interplanetary space, three NASA scientists teamed up to develop and demonstrate NASA's first wide-field-of-view soft X-ray camera. It is rare to have researchers from such diverse disciplines as heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science teaming up, but that's exactly what happened at...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online New observations have led to a better understanding of supernovae, which could one day lead to even better forecasts for the cosmic events. Type II supernovae form when a massive star collapses, sending off a giant explosion from the dying star. Having a better way to predict these events would allow astronomers to study them in their earliest stages. Astronomers wrote in the journal Nature this week that they have observed an...
Revising and revisiting the Giant Impact Theory Scientists are revisiting the age-old question of how Earth's moon formed with the development of two new models that work out the complicated physics of planetary collisions. The idea of a moon-forming collision is not new: The Giant Impact Theory put forth in the 1970s suggested that the moon resulted from a collision with a protoplanet approximately half the size of ancient Earth. But the physics underlying such a collision implied that...
John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Black holes of any size are mysterious, seemingly breaking through the barriers of the physical laws that guide our Universe. Formed under extreme conditions -- such as the collapse of a massive star, some ten times the mass of our Sun or more -- these objects are very difficult to study under any conditions. Most puzzling are a class of black holes that can range in size from millions to billions of solar masses. Such...
SAN DIEGO, Jan. 31, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Following the recent announcement of a strategic Teaming Agreement, Envision Solar International, Inc. (EVSI), and Horizon Energy Group, announced that they had executed a Memorandum of Understanding, dated November 20, 2012, and the commencement of design work on a Solar Forest in North Carolina. The Solar Forest will be comprised of approximately 2300 Solar Tree® structures and will generate approximately 35 megawatts of clean renewable...
Latest Astrophysics 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: 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...
Solar cycles: what are they and why should we care about them? Solar cycles are made up of what are known as solar minimums (min) and solar maximums (max). We refer to a solar min at the time when the sun is not active with many sunspots, while a solar max is just the opposite when we see a large increase in sunspot activity. So how long do solar cycles last? Typically they run on what is known as an 11 year cycle from the max to the min and then start over again anew. As of 2012 we...
Physics is a natural science involving the study of matter and its motion through space-time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. On a broader scale, it also involves the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves. Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Physics was part of natural philosophy until the Scientific Revolution in the 16th century, when the natural...
The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review is a peer-reviewed scientific journal published quarterly by Springer Science Business Media. The editor-in-chief is Thierry Courvoisier. It was first published in April 1989. The journal covers all areas of astronomy and astrophysics, including cosmic ray physics, studies in the solar system, astrobiology, developments in laboratory or particle physics relevant to astronomy, instrumentation, computational or statistical methods with specific...
