European Association for Astronomy Education

Orion's Hidden Fiery Ribbon

Alexandre Costa — Wed, 15 May 2013 11:59:39 +0000

Credit: ESO Photo Release eso1321 This dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, at wavelengths too long for human eyes to see. It was observed by the [...]

Planets Aligning in the Sunset Sky

Alexandre Costa — Sat, 11 May 2013 22:26:47 +0000

Source: NASA Science Casts - YouTube Mercury, Venus and Jupiter are lining up for a beautiful sunset conjunction at the end of May.

Hubble finds dead stars "polluted" with planetary debris

Alexandre Costa — Thu, 09 May 2013 22:27:17 +0000

Source:ESA/Hubble Science Release heic1309 The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has found signs of Earth-like planets in an unlikely place: the atmospheres of a pair of burnt-out stars in a nearby star cluster. The white dwarf stars are being polluted by debris from asteroid-like objects falling onto them. This discovery suggests that rocky planet assembly is [...]

Herschel finds hot gas on the menu for Milky Way’s black hole

Alexandre Costa — Tue, 07 May 2013 20:45:59 +0000

Credit: ESA/Herschel ESA’s Herschel space observatory has made detailed observations of surprisingly hot molecular gas that may be orbiting or falling towards the supermassive black hole lurking at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy.(read more)

Cosmic Flashes May Signal Birth of Black Holes

Alexandre Costa — Sun, 05 May 2013 16:29:58 +0000

Source: The Daily Galaxy When a massive star exhausts its fuel, it collapses under its own gravity and produces a black hole, an object so dense that not even light can escape its gravitational grip. According to a new analysis by an astrophysicist at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), just before the black hole [...]

ALMA Pinpoints Early Galaxies at Record Speed

Alexandre Costa — Fri, 03 May 2013 21:08:36 +0000

Credit ESO Science Release 1318 Image credits:ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), J. Hodge et al., A. Weiss et al., NASA Spitzer Science Center A team of astronomers has used the new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope to pinpoint the locations of over 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. ALMA is so powerful [...]

Mysterious Hurricane Spotted on Saturn

Alexandre Costa — Wed, 01 May 2013 18:03:55 +0000

Source: NASA Science News NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted a gigantic hurricane swirling inside a mysterious, six-sided weather pattern known as "the hexagon" on Saturn.(read more)

Herschel closes its eyes on the Universe

Alexandre Costa — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:57:11 +0000

Source: ESA Press Release 11-2013 Herschel and Vela C. Image copyright: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortia, T. Hill, F. Motte, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU – CNRS/INSU Uni. Paris Diderot, HOBYS Key Programme Consortium. ESA's Herschel space observatory has exhausted, as planned, its supply of liquid helium coolant, concluding over three years of pioneering observations of the [...]

Meteors strike Saturn's rings

Alexandre Costa — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 22:52:40 +0000

Source: NASA Science News Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/Cornell. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids crashing into Saturn's rings and breaking into streams of rubble. (read more)

Einstein Was Right — So Far— Record-breaking pulsar takes tests of general relativity into new territory

Alexandre Costa — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 21:49:42 +0000

Source: ESO Artist’s impression of the pulsar PSR J0348+0432 and its white dwarf companion. Image credits: ESO/L. Calçada. Astronomers have used ESO’s Very Large Telescope, along with radio telescopes around the world, to find and study a bizarre stellar pair consisting of the most massive neutron star confirmed so far, orbited by a white dwarf [...]