Astronomy News and Research

'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.

Opening up a colorful cosmic jewel box

Monday, November 02, 2009 00:00 MST

The combination of images taken by three exceptional telescopes, the ESO Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal, the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO's La Silla observatory and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, has allowed the stunning Jewel Box star cluster to be seen in a whole new light.

Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way

Sunday, November 01, 2009 00:00 MST

Cobbling together 3,000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece.

Blast from the past gives clues about early universe

Saturday, October 31, 2009 00:00 MST

Astronomers studied the most distant object yet seen in the Universe, a giant stellar blast from more than 13 billion years ago, and learned tantalizing facts about the blast itself and the environment of the star that exploded in the early Universe.

Fermi telescope caps its first year with a glimpse of space-time

Friday, October 30, 2009 00:00 MST

During its first year of operations, NASA's Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope mapped the extreme sky with unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. It captured more than one thousand discrete sources of gamma rays -- the highest-energy form of light. Capping these achievements was a measurement that provided rare experimental evidence about the very structure of space and time, unified as space-time in Einstein's theories.