Latest Observational astronomy Stories

MENLO PARK, Calif., April 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- SRI International is the new manager of the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) facility in Northern California, home of the Allen Telescope Array. SRI will assume site management responsibilities from the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. "The Hat Creek Radio Observatory has a rich history of important scientific research about space and complex molecules," said Scott Seaton, vice president of...

[ Watch the Video ] Astronomers have made a breakthrough discovery in understanding a nearby planetary system, giving clues about how these systems form and evolve. Scientists used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to find that planets orbiting the star Fomalhaut must be smaller than originally thought. The high-resolution images show that both the inner and outer edges of the thin, dusty disk have very sharp edges.  This, as well as computer simulations, have...

Observations by two of the European Space Agency's space observatories have provided a multi-wavelength view of the mysterious galaxy Centaurus A. The elliptical galaxy Centaurus A at visible, far-infrared and x-ray wavelengths. In visible light the galaxy appears as a ball of stars, with a thick lane of dust running across it. The far-infrared light shows the glow from jets of material emanating from near the black hole in the galaxy’s core. Also visible is a twisted disc of dust, the...

Watch out Seven Sisters, Venus is coming. This week the second planet from the sun will pass directly in front of the Pleiades star cluster. It's a rare sunset conjunction that's easy to find with the unaided eye, but best seen through binoculars or a small telescope. The action began on Monday evening, April 2nd, when Venus enters the outskirts of the little dipper-shaped asterism. Look west at sunset for Venus--it's the brightest thing around--then scan the area using binoculars. The...

IBM on Sunday, April 1 announced that it has won a $42 million contract to work with the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) to research a new line of super-fast computers that will be needed for the Square Kilometer Array (SKA) to perform the most exhaustive search of the origins of the universe seen to date. IBM scientists will be part of an initial five-year collaboration called DOME, named for the protective cover on telescopes and for the famous Swiss mountain, which...

Venus's rendezvous with the Pleiades star cluster and the increasing prominence of Mars in the east-southeast part of the sky mark two of the highlights for stargazers to enjoy during the month of April. According to Joe Rao of Space.com, Earth's so-called sister planet will be visible near the star cluster known as the Seven Sisters in the west-northwestern part of the sky on Tuesday, April 3. Venus will pass within a half-degree to the south of the Pleiades that evening, Rao said. The...

[ Watch the Video ] The human eye is crucial to astronomy. Without the ability to see, the luminous universe of stars, planets and galaxies would be closed to us, unknown forever. Nevertheless, astronomers cannot shake their fascination with the invisible. Outside the realm of human vision is an entire electromagnetic spectrum of wonders. Each type of light--­from radio waves to gamma-rays--reveals something unique about the universe. Some wavelengths are best for studying black holes;...

A neutron star is the closest thing to a black hole that astronomers can observe directly, crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. In October 2010, a neutron star near the center of our galaxy erupted with hundreds of X-ray bursts that were powered by a barrage of thermonuclear explosions on the star's surface. NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) captured the month-long fusillade in extreme detail. Using this data, an international team of...

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] An international team of astronomers has found evidence of life in the Universe – right here on Earth – after pointing one of the world’s largest telescope at the Moon.  While the observation might seem trivial, it has helped perfect a technique that could lead to future discoveries of life outside our solar system. The researchers used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) to look at Earthshine reflected from the moon....

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] Star formation in “dark markings of the sky” A new image from the APEX (Atacama Pathfinder Experiment) telescope in Chile shows a sinuous filament of cosmic dust more than ten light-years long. In it, newborn stars are hidden, and dense clouds of gas are on the verge of collapsing to form yet more stars. It is one of the regions of star formation closest to us. The cosmic dust grains are so cold that observations at wavelengths of around one millimeter,...