Latest Monoceros constellation Stories

WATCH VIDEOS: [Panning Across NGC 6559] | [Zooming In On NGC 6559] John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Danish 1.54-metre telescope located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has released a new image of the star-forming region NGC 6559. Located relatively nearby, a mere 5000 light-years from Earth, NGC 6559 is found in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). The nebula is only a few light years across, a stark contrast to its more well-known...

Watch the Video: [ Zooming in on the Seagull Nebula ] Watch the Video: [ Panning Across the Head of the Seagull Nebula ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image taken by the European Space Observatory's La Silla Observatory shows off a stellar nursery nicknamed the Seagull Nebula. This nebula looks like the head of the seagull, and glows brightly due to the energetic radiation from a hot young star that sits at its heart. Nebulae are interstellar...

The French-led CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) satellite has found ten new planets outside our Solar System. The new find brings the total number of known exoplanets to 561.  CoRoT launched in 2006 and it spots planets by measuring the tiny dip in stellar light that occurs when planets pass between the stars and the Earth. The spacecraft has added 23 planetary systems to the roster so far. CoRoT went into orbit shortly after NASA's Kepler, which is a similar mission...

Unicorns and roses are usually the stuff of fairy tales, but a new cosmic image taken by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WISE) shows the Rosette nebula located within the constellation Monoceros, or the Unicorn.This flower-shaped nebula, also known by the less romantic name NGC 2237, is a huge star-forming cloud of dust and gas in our Milky Way galaxy. Estimates of the nebula's distance vary from 4,500 to 5,000 light-years away.At the center of the flower is a cluster of young stars...

By detecting the faint dimming in the light emitted by stars during a transit event, CoRoT has detected six new exoplanets - each with its own peculiar characteristics - and one brown dwarf. One of these exoplanets, designated CoRoT-11b, has twice the mass of Jupiter and orbits a rapidly rotating star; this type of star is an extremely difficult target for exoplanet searches and its detection marks a significant achievement for the CoRoT team. In order to detect planets orbiting other suns,...

Combining observations from the CoRoT satellite and the ESO HARPS instrument, astronomers have discovered the first "normal" exoplanet that can be studied in great detail. Designated Corot-9b, the planet regularly passes in front of a star similar to the Sun located 1500 light-years away from Earth towards the constellation of Serpens (the Snake)."This is a normal, temperate exoplanet just like dozens we already know, but this is the first whose properties we can study in depth," says Claire...

GREENBELT, Md., Jan. 6 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The most earthlike planet yet found around another star may be the rocky remains of a Saturn-sized gas giant, according to research presented today at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) "The first planets detected outside our solar system 15 years ago turned out to be enormous gas-giants in very tight orbits around their stars. We call them 'hot Jupiters,'...

When scientists confirmed in October that they had detected the first rocky planet outside our solar system, it advanced the longtime quest to find an Earth-like planet hospitable to life.Rocky planets "“ Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars "“ make up half the planets in our solar system. Rocky planets are considered better environments to support life than planets that are mainly gaseous, like the other half of the planets in our system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.The rocky planet...

Astronomers have discovered the second super-Earth exoplanet [1] for which they have determined the mass and radius, giving vital clues about its structure. It is also the first super-Earth where an atmosphere has been found. The exoplanet, orbiting a small star only 40 light-years away from us, opens up dramatic new perspectives in the quest for habitable worlds. The planet, GJ1214b, has a mass about six times that of Earth and its interior is likely to be mostly made of water ice. Its...

This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special issue devoted to the early results obtained with the CoRoT space mission. It includes 55 articles dealing with the primary goals of the CoRoT mission, that is, exoplanet hunting and asteroseismology, and also with other topics in stellar physics. Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special issue this week dedicated to the early results of the CoRoT space mission [1]. The CoRoT (Convection, Rotation & planetary...