Latest Star types Stories

[ Watch the Video ] A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature. Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the universe's most luminous explosions, emitting more energy in a few seconds than our sun will during its...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 30, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA's Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) are the...

For the first time, astronomers have produced a complete description of a black hole, a concentration of mass so dense that not even light can escape its powerful gravitational pull. Their precise measurements have allowed them to reconstruct the history of the object from its birth some six million years ago. Using several telescopes, both ground-based and in orbit, the scientists unraveled longstanding mysteries about the object called Cygnus X-1, a famous binary-star system discovered...

The very first stars in our universe were not the behemoths scientists had once thought, according to new simulations performed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Astronomers "grew" stars in their computers, mimicking the conditions of our primordial universe. The simulations took weeks. When the scientists' concoctions were finally done, they were shocked by the results -- the full-grown stars were much smaller than expected. Until now, it was widely believed that...

Neutron stars have been called the zombies of the cosmos, shining on even though they're technically dead, and occasionally feeding on a neighboring star if it gets too close. They are born when a massive star runs out of fuel and collapses under its own gravity, crushing the matter in its core and blasting away its outer layers in a supernova explosion that can outshine a billion suns. The core, compressed by gravity to inconceivable density – one teaspoon would weigh about a billion...

Astronomers at the universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their finding also suggests that each variety is produced by a different kind of supernova event. Neutron stars are the last stage in the evolution of many massive stars. They represent the most extreme form of matter: the mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the entire sun, but...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An international team of scientists using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) At the same time, another team has located nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi data, using improved analytical techniques. A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits...

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] | [ Video 3 ] NASA said on Thursday that its scientists have discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories. The international team of scientists used NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope to find that the object is the most luminous pulsar detected in the galaxy cluster to date, spinning at 11,000 rotations per minute. The researchers wrote in the November 3 issue of the journal Science that the pulsar is only 25...

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 2 p.m. EDT on Thursday, Nov. 3, to discuss new discoveries about pulsars by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. A pulsar is the closest thing to a black hole astronomers can observe directly. Pulsars are capable of crushing half a million times more mass than Earth into a sphere no larger than a city. Some of these objects spin tens of thousands of revolutions per minute, faster than the blades of a kitchen blender. Participants are: - Paulo...

The photo of a nearby star and its orbiting companion -- whose temperature is like a hot summer day in Arizona -- will be presented by Penn State Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kevin Luhman during the Signposts of Planets conference at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center on 20 October 2011. A paper describing the discovery will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. "This planet-like companion is the coldest object ever directly photographed outside our solar system,"...