Latest Ultraviolet astronomy Stories

BALTIMORE -- Having coaxed all the life they can out of an 8-year-old ultraviolet light-detecting space telescope, scientists will reluctantly turn it off later this month.After that, NASA's Fuse observatory will be "just another piece of space junk," orbiting the earth every 100 minutes until it falls back to Earth in about 30 years, said Bill Blair, the Fuse operations chief and an astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University.Fuse, short for Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic...

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer is celebrating its fourth year in space with some of M81's "hottest" stars. In a new ultraviolet image, the magnificent M81 spiral galaxy is shown at the center. The orbiting observatory spies the galaxy's "sizzling young starlets" as wisps of bluish-white swirling around a central golden glow. The tints of gold at M81's center come from a "senior citizen" population of smoldering stars. "This is a spectacular view of...

A giant black hole has been caught red-handed dipping into a cosmic cookie jar of stars by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer. This is the first time astronomers have seen the whole process of a black hole eating a star, from its first to nearly final bites. "This type of event is very rare, so we are lucky to study the entire process from beginning to end," said Dr. Suvi Gezari of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. Gezari is lead author of a new paper appearing...

JPL -- A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer completes a multi-wavelength, neon-colored portrait of the enormous Cartwheel galaxy after a smaller galaxy plunged through it, triggering ripples of sudden, brief star formation. The false-color composite image shows the Cartwheel galaxy as seen by Galaxy Evolution Explorer in ultraviolet light (blue); the Hubble Space Telescope in visible light (green); the Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared (red); and the Chandra X-ray...

JPL -- It was a day like any other for a nearby star named GJ 3685A until it suddenly exploded with light. At 2 p.m. Pacific time, April 24, 2004, the detectors on NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer ultraviolet space telescope nearly overloaded when the star abruptly brightened by a factor of at least 10,000. After the excitement was over, astronomers realized that they had just recorded a giant star eruption, or flare, about one million times more energetic than those from our Sun. This...

PSU -- The Swift satellite's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) has seen first light, capturing an image of the Pinwheel Galaxy, long loved by amateur astronomers as the "perfect" face-on spiral galaxy. The UVOT now remains poised to observe its first gamma-ray burst. Swift is a NASA-led mission dedicated to the gamma-ray burst mystery. These random and fleeting explosions likely signal the birth of black holes. With the UVOT turned on, Swift now is fully operational. Swift's two...

JPL -- NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has spotted what appear to be massive "baby" galaxies in our corner of the universe. Previously, astronomers thought the universe's birth rate had dramatically declined and only small galaxies were forming. "We knew there were really massive young galaxies eons ago, but we thought they had all matured into older ones more like our Milky Way. If these galaxies are indeed newly formed, then this implies parts of the universe are still...