Latest Submillimetre astronomy Stories

VLA sees most distant object in universe, gets key physics dataAstronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have gained tantalizing insights into the nature of the most distant object ever observed in the Universe -- a gigantic stellar explosion known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB).The explosion was detected on April 23 by NASA's Swift satellite, and scientists soon realized that it was more than 13 billion light-years from Earth. It represents an...

The ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) astronomical observatory took another step forward and upward, as one of its state-of-the-art antennas was carried for the first time to Chile's 16,500-foot-high plateau of Chajnantor on the back of a giant, custom-built transporter. The 40-foot-diameter antenna, weighing about 100 tons, was moved to ALMA's high-altitude Array Operations Site, where the extremely dry and rarefied air is ideal for observing the Universe.The conditions at...

Astronomers have unveiled an unprecedented new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust "” the potential birthplaces of new stars. Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this survey is the largest map of cold dust so far, and will prove an invaluable map for observations made with the forthcoming ALMA telescope, as well as the recently launched ESA Herschel space...

A telescope designed by a University of Miami physicist and an international team of collaborators has produced the clearest images of starburst galaxies, revealing a new picture of the universe in its early stagesPeople have always wondered where we, our Earth, our galaxy, come from. A group of scientists has now driven that quest one step further and taken a peak at how the stars that gave rise to most of the material found on our universe formed over cosmic history.University of Miami...

Scientists and engineers working on the world's largest ground-based astronomical project, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have achieved another milestone "” the successful linking of two ALMA astronomical antennas, synchronized with a precision of one millionth of a millionth of a second "” to observe the planet Mars. ALMA is under construction by an international partnership in the Chilean Andes.On 30 April, the team observed the first "interferometric fringes"...

Two missions to study the cosmos, the Herschel and Planck spacecraft, are scheduled to blast into space May 14 aboard the same Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. The European Space Agency, or ESA, leads both missions with significant participation from NASA."The missions are quite different, but they'll hitch a ride to space together," said Ulf Israelsson, NASA project manager for both Herschel and Planck. "Launch processing is moving along smoothly....

WASHINGTON, May 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Two missions to study the cosmos, the Herschel and Planck spacecraft, are scheduled to blast into space May 14 aboard the same Ariane 5 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. The European Space Agency, or ESA, leads both missions with significant participation from NASA. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) "The missions are quite different, but they'll hitch a ride to space together," said Ulf...

An international team of astronomers have undertaken a survey with a new submillimeter camera have discovered more than a hundred dusty galaxies in the early Universe, each of which is in the throes of an intense burst of star formation. One of these galaxies is an example of a rare class of starburst, seen just 1 billion years after the Big Bang. In her presentation on Wednesday 22nd April at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science conference, team leader Dr. Kristen Coppin of...

Scientists from the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia have helped unveil the birthplaces of ancient stars using a two-ton telescope carried by a balloon the size of a 33-storey building.After two years spent analyzing data from the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope (BLAST) project, an international group of astronomers and astrophysicists from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. reveals today in the journal Nature that half of the starlight of the...

Astronomers have a new insight into the active galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128), as the jets and lobes emanating from the central black hole have been imaged at submillimeter wavelengths for the first time. The new data, from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile, which is operated by ESO, have been combined with visible and X-ray wavelengths to produce this striking new image. Centaurus A is our nearest giant galaxy, at a distance of about 13 million light-years in the...