Latest Star Stories
NEW YORK, Nov. 13, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- American Media, Inc. ("AMI") today announced that it will hold an earnings conference call on November 14, 2012 at 3:30 pm EST to discuss its fiscal 2013 second quarter results. The Company's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the three and six month periods ended September 30, 2012 will be available prior to the call at the Securities and Exchange Commission's web site at www.sec.gov. Conference call details are as follows:Date: Wednesday,...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] | Video 3 ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered a pair of stars orbiting each other at the center of a remarkable example of a planetary nebula. The latest find confirms a theory about what controls the spectacular and symmetric appearance of the material flung out into space. Planetary nebulae are glowing shells of gas around white dwarfs, and Fleming 1 is considered a great example that has strikingly...
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA has released a new image of the Cygnus OB2 star cluster, detailing its structure and evolution. The Milky Way, as well as other galaxies in the universe, are home to numerous young star clusters with hundreds of thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars. Cygnus OB2 is one of these clusters that contains no less than 60 O-type stars and upwards of a thousand B-type stars. Using the Chandra X-Ray...
MCLEAN, Va., Nov. 8, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- USA TODAY and National Geographic Channel have partnered on a special tabloid edition: 50 Years Later - A Salute to the Veterans of the Vietnam War. The special edition marks the 50(th) anniversary of the start of the Vietnam War. The 48-page all color special edition includes: A look at Vietnam veterans from all 50 states, each representing a different aspect of post-Vietnam life in the USA. Some of the veterans are well-known, such as...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers, writing in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, have revealed that the rate of new stars in the Universe is dropping, which is a trend that could continue. The team of astronomers from five different countries said the rate of formation of new stars is now only 1/30th of its peak. The accepted model for evolution of the Universe suggests that stars began to form about 13.4 billion years ago....
ZANESVILLE, Ohio, Nov. 2, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- A former astronomy teacher has proven the existence of the Christmas star using numerous NASA astronomy computer programs. During extensive research, Irene Baron surveyed 15 years of ancient skies. Comparing astronomy events with symbols and interpretations used by ancient sky watchers, the author discovered the Christmas star occurred directly over Bethlehem at Christ's birth in the year 4 A.D. The data has been released in the...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team, including Raymond Carlberg of the University of Toronto's Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics, has discovered the most-distant, super-luminous supernovae observed to date. The violent stellar explosions which caused these supernovae would have occurred soon after the Big Bang when the universe was much younger. "The objects are both unusually bright and unusually slow to fade. These are properties that...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] European Southern Observatory Photo Release This colorful view of the globular star cluster NGC 6362 was captured by the Wide Field Imager attached to the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. This new picture, along with a new image of the central region from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, provide the best view of this little-known cluster ever obtained. Globular clusters are mainly composed of tens of thousands of very...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team from Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has observed the earliest stages of star formation using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. The astronomers were able to produce a three-dimensional map of the molecular cloud B68, a possible birthplace for a low-mass star. They managed to also identify a previously unobserved class of object that could be the earliest known precursor of the birth of massive...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomer J. Craig Wheeler reports in The Astrophysical Journal that he has a new theory on the identity of the "parents" of Type Ia supernovae. Wheeler said that current theories of Type Ia parents do not correctly match up with telescope data on actual supernovae. There are two models today that attempt to explain how Type Ia supernovae are born, the first being "single-degenerate model." In this model, a binary star is made...
Latest Star 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...
UV Astronomy -- UV astronomy is the branch of astronomy and astrophysics which deals with objects visible in ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV radiation ranges approximatively from 10nm (extreme UV) to 380nm (near UV). Ultraviolet line spectrum measurements are used to discern the chemical composition, densities, and temperatures of interstellar medium, and the temperature and composition of hot young stars. UV observations can also provide essential information about the evolution of...
Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram -- In stellar astronomy, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram (H-R diagram) shows the relation between the absolute magnitude and the spectral types of stars. It was invented around 1910 by Ejnar Hertzsprung and Henry Norris Russell. There are two equivalent forms. One is the observer's form which plots the color of the star on one axis and the absolute magnitude on the other axis. The theoretician's form plots the temperature of the star on one axis and the...
X-ray Burster -- X-ray bursters are a class of binary stars which are luminous in X-rays. They contain a neutron star and a low-mass companion star. The companion fills its Roche lobe and therefore the neutron star is accreting matter from it. The inflowing gas forms an accretion disk around the neutron star. Sometimes X-ray bursters show a sudden increase in their X-ray luminosity, called X-ray burst. All properties of the X-ray bursts can be explained assuming that they result from...
Variable Star -- Most stars are of nearly constant luminosity. Our own Sun is a good example which goes through practically no measurable variation in brightness. There are, however, stars which do vary in brightness, called variable stars. They fall into two main groups: Intrinsic variables These are stars which have intrinsic variations in brightness, that is the star itself gets brighter and dimmer. There are many types of intrinsic variables, the main types being: --...
