Astronomy News and Research

Exoplanets clue to sun's curious chemistry

Sunday, November 15, 2009 00:00 MST

A ground-breaking census of 500 stars, 70 of which are known to host planets, has successfully linked the long-standing "lithium mystery" observed in the Sun to the presence of planetary systems. Using ESO's successful HARPS spectrograph, a team of astronomers has found that sun-like stars that host planets have destroyed their lithium much more efficiently than "planet-free" stars.

A bubbling ball of gas

Friday, November 13, 2009 00:00 MST

The SUNRISE telescope delivers spectacular pictures of the sun's surface.

Rapid star formation spotted in 'stellar nurseries' of infant galaxies

Thursday, November 12, 2009 00:00 MST

The Universe's infant galaxies enjoyed rapid growth spurts forming stars like our sun at a rate of up to 50 stars a year, according to scientists at Durham University.

Professor to predict weather on Mars

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 00:00 MST

Is there such a thing as "weather" on Mars? There are some doubts, considering the planet's atmosphere is only 1 percent as dense as that of the Earth. Mars, however, definitely has clouds, drastically low temperatures and out-of-this-world dust storms, and Istvan Szunyogh, a Texas AandM professor of atmospheric sciences, has been awarded a NASA grant to analyze and forecast Martian weather.

'Dropouts' pinpoint earliest galaxies

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 00:00 MST

Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its characteristic hydrogen signature at 787 million years post Big Bang. The finding is the first age-confirmation of a so-called dropout galaxy at that distant time and pinpoints when an era called the reionization epoch likely began.

New type of supernova explosion reported; predicted by theoretical physicists at UCSB

Monday, November 09, 2009 00:00 MST

A new class of supernova was discovered by scientists at Berkeley and may be the first example of a new type of exploding star. A team of astrophysicists at UC Santa Barbara had predicted this kind of explosion in their theoretical work.

'Ultra-primitive' particles found in comet dust

Sunday, November 08, 2009 00:00 MST

Dust samples collected from the stratosphere have yielded an unexpectedly rich trove of relicts from the ancient cosmos, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution. The dust includes presolar grains and material from interstellar molecular clouds. This "ultra-primitive" material likely wafted into the atmosphere after the Earth passed through the trail of an Earth-crossing comet in 2003, giving scientists a rare opportunity to study cometary dust in the laboratory.

VERITAS telescopes help solve 100-year-old mystery: The origin of cosmic rays

Saturday, November 07, 2009 00:00 MST

Nearly 100 years ago, scientists detected the first signs of cosmic rays -- subatomic particles that zip through space at nearly the speed of light. The most energetic cosmic rays hit with the punch of a 98-mph fastball, even though they are smaller than an atom. Astronomers questioned what force could accelerate particles to such a speed. New evidence from the VERITAS telescopes shows that cosmic rays likely are powered by exploding stars and stellar "winds."

Researchers contribute to discovery of gamma rays from starburst galaxy

Friday, November 06, 2009 00:00 MST

Iowa State University researchers have contributed to the discovery of high-energy gamma rays coming from a galaxy that's quickly creating new stars. The discovery has just been published in the journal Nature. A key to the research is the VERITAS telescope system that Iowa State researchers helped build.

NASA's Fermi telescope detects gamma-ray from 'star factories' in other galaxies

Friday, November 06, 2009 00:00 MST

Nearby galaxies undergoing a furious pace of star formation also emit lots of gamma rays, say astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope. Two so-called "starburst" galaxies, plus a satellite of our own Milky Way galaxy, represent a new category of gamma-ray-emitting objects detected both by Fermi and ground-based observatories.

Carbon atmosphere discovered on neutron star

Friday, November 06, 2009 00:00 MST

Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a ten-year mystery surrounding this object.

University of Utah celebrates telescope's 'first light'

Thursday, November 05, 2009 00:00 MST

The University of Utah will celebrate the initial observations or "first light" of its new $860,000 research telescope in southwest Utah during a Wednesday, Nov. 11 symposium and reception on the Salt Lake City campus. The new Willard L. Eccles Observatory's 32-inch reflecting telescope took its first pictures the night of Oct. 15 from the 9,600-foot level on Frisco Peak in southern Utah.

Shedding light on the cosmic skeleton

Thursday, November 05, 2009 00:00 MST

Astronomers have tracked down a gigantic, previously unknown assembly of galaxies located almost seven billion light-years away from us. The discovery, made possible by combining two of the most powerful ground-based telescopes in the world, is the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe, providing further insight into the cosmic web and how it formed.

Solar winds triggered by magnetic fields

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 00:00 MST

Solar wind generated by the sun is probably driven by a process involving powerful magnetic fields, according to a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers based on the latest observations from the Hinode satellite.

High-precision measurements confirm cosmologists' standard view of the universe

Wednesday, November 04, 2009 00:00 MST

A detailed picture of the seeds of structures in the universe has been unveiled by an international team co-led by Sarah Church of KIPAC, jointly located SLAC and Stanford University, and by Walter Gear, of Cardiff University. These measurements put limits on proposed alternatives to the standard model of cosmology and provide further support for the standard cosmological model, confirming that dark matter and dark energy make up 95 percent of everything in existence.