Featured News
Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
14 Jun 2017, 08:45 UTC
Just like in human civilizations the birth rate in the Universe fluctuated over time. When the Universe had reached 2.5 Billion years of its current age of approximately 13.8 Billion years, galaxies produced the majority of all stars ever formed. An international team of astronomers including reasearcher from the Argelander-Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn and the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy Heidelberg has now vastly improved on previous estimates. The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Telescope in New Mexico (USA) allowed to undertake a survey of distant galaxies that produced unprecendentedly detailed and deep radio views over a very large celestial area. The results will now be published in a special edition of the journal „Astronomy & Astrophysics“.
A most detailed view into distant stellar nurseries
14 Jun 2017, 08:45 UTC
Just like in human civilizations the birth rate in the Universe fluctuated over time. When the Universe had reached 2.5 Billion years of its current age of approximately 13.8 Billion years, galaxies produced the majority of all stars ever formed. An international team of astronomers including reasearcher from the Argelander-Institute for Astronomy at the University of Bonn and the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy Heidelberg has now vastly improved on previous estimates. The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array Telescope in New Mexico (USA) allowed to undertake a survey of distant galaxies that produced unprecendentedly detailed and deep radio views over a very large celestial area. The results will now be published in a special edition of the journal „Astronomy & Astrophysics“.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features
13 Jun 2017, 18:39 UTC
Five years ago, on June 13, 2012, Caltech's Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of NASA's NuSTAR mission, watched with her team as their black-hole-spying spacecraft was launched into space aboard a rocket strapped to the belly of an aircraft. The launch occurred over the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Many members of the team anxiously followed the launch from the mission's operations center at the University of California, Berkeley, anxious to see what NuSTAR would find.
NuSTAR's First Five Years in Space
13 Jun 2017, 18:39 UTC
Five years ago, on June 13, 2012, Caltech's Fiona Harrison, principal investigator of NASA's NuSTAR mission, watched with her team as their black-hole-spying spacecraft was launched into space aboard a rocket strapped to the belly of an aircraft. The launch occurred over the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Many members of the team anxiously followed the launch from the mission's operations center at the University of California, Berkeley, anxious to see what NuSTAR would find.
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)
13 Jun 2017, 16:47 UTC
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered new details that are helping them decipher the mystery of how giant radio-emitting structures are formed at the center of a cluster of galaxies. The scientists studied a cluster of thousands of galaxies more than 250 million light-years from Earth, named the Perseus Cluster after the constellation in which it appears. Embedded within the center, the Perseus Cluster hosts a pool of superfast particles that emit radio waves, creating a radio structure known as a “mini-halo.” Mini-haloes have been found in about 30 galaxy clusters, but the halo in the Perseus Cluster is the largest known, about 1.3 million light-years in diameter, or 10 times the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. The sizes of the mini-haloes have presented a puzzle to astronomers. As the particles travel away from the cluster’s center, they should slow down and stop emitting radio waves long before they reach the distances observed, according to theory. “At large distances from the central galaxy, we don’t expect to be able to see these haloes,” said Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais, of the University of Montreal. “However, we do see them and we want to ...
VLA Gives New Insight Into Galaxy Cluster’s Spectacular “Mini-Halo”
13 Jun 2017, 16:47 UTC
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have discovered new details that are helping them decipher the mystery of how giant radio-emitting structures are formed at the center of a cluster of galaxies. The scientists studied a cluster of thousands of galaxies more than 250 million light-years from Earth, named the Perseus Cluster after the constellation in which it appears. Embedded within the center, the Perseus Cluster hosts a pool of superfast particles that emit radio waves, creating a radio structure known as a “mini-halo.” Mini-haloes have been found in about 30 galaxy clusters, but the halo in the Perseus Cluster is the largest known, about 1.3 million light-years in diameter, or 10 times the size of our Milky Way Galaxy. The sizes of the mini-haloes have presented a puzzle to astronomers. As the particles travel away from the cluster’s center, they should slow down and stop emitting radio waves long before they reach the distances observed, according to theory. “At large distances from the central galaxy, we don’t expect to be able to see these haloes,” said Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais, of the University of Montreal. “However, we do see them and we want to ...
NASA's Ames Research Center News and Features
13 Jun 2017, 14:00 UTC
SOFIA Finds Cool Dust Around Energetic Active Black Holes
13 Jun 2017, 14:00 UTC
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features
9 Jun 2017, 19:06 UTC
NASA scientists have found a wide diversity of minerals in the initial samples of rocks collected by the Curiosity rover in the lowermost layers of Mount Sharp on Mars, suggesting that conditions changed in the water environments on the planet over time.
NASA Finds Evidence of Diverse Environments in Curiosity Samples
9 Jun 2017, 19:06 UTC
NASA scientists have found a wide diversity of minerals in the initial samples of rocks collected by the Curiosity rover in the lowermost layers of Mount Sharp on Mars, suggesting that conditions changed in the water environments on the planet over time.
ESA Top News
9 Jun 2017, 13:55 UTC
The challenging detection, by ESA's Rosetta mission, of several isotopes of the noble gas xenon at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has established the first quantitative link between comets and the atmosphere of Earth. The blend of xenon found at the comet closely resembles U-xenon, the primordial mixture that scientists believe was brought to Earth during the early stages of Solar System formation. These measurements suggest that comets contributed about one fifth the amount of xenon in Earth's ancient atmosphere.
The xenon connection
9 Jun 2017, 13:55 UTC
The challenging detection, by ESA's Rosetta mission, of several isotopes of the noble gas xenon at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko has established the first quantitative link between comets and the atmosphere of Earth. The blend of xenon found at the comet closely resembles U-xenon, the primordial mixture that scientists believe was brought to Earth during the early stages of Solar System formation. These measurements suggest that comets contributed about one fifth the amount of xenon in Earth's ancient atmosphere.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features
8 Jun 2017, 16:24 UTC
The moon hanging in the night sky sent Robert Hurt's mind into deep space -- to a region some 40 light years away, in fact, where seven Earth-sized planets crowded close to a dim, red sun. Hurt, a visualization scientist at Caltech's IPAC center, was walking outside his home in Mar Vista, California, shortly after he learned of the discovery of these rocky worlds around a star called TRAPPIST-1 and got the assignment to visualize them. The planets had been revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based observatories. "I just stopped dead in my tracks, and I just stared at it," Hurt said in an interview. "I was imagining that could be, not our moon, but the next planet over - what it would be like to be in a system where you could look up and see continental features on the next planet."
The Art of Exoplanets
8 Jun 2017, 16:24 UTC
The moon hanging in the night sky sent Robert Hurt's mind into deep space -- to a region some 40 light years away, in fact, where seven Earth-sized planets crowded close to a dim, red sun. Hurt, a visualization scientist at Caltech's IPAC center, was walking outside his home in Mar Vista, California, shortly after he learned of the discovery of these rocky worlds around a star called TRAPPIST-1 and got the assignment to visualize them. The planets had been revealed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and ground-based observatories. "I just stopped dead in my tracks, and I just stared at it," Hurt said in an interview. "I was imagining that could be, not our moon, but the next planet over - what it would be like to be in a system where you could look up and see continental features on the next planet."
ESO Top News
8 Jun 2017, 10:00 UTC
ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate — a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery could help astronomers understand how life arose on Earth.
ALMA Finds Ingredient of Life Around Infant Sun-like Stars
8 Jun 2017, 10:00 UTC
ALMA has observed stars like the Sun at a very early stage in their formation and found traces of methyl isocyanate — a chemical building block of life. This is the first ever detection of this prebiotic molecule towards solar-type protostars, the sort from which our Solar System evolved. The discovery could help astronomers understand how life arose on Earth.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory News and Features
7 Jun 2017, 18:11 UTC
