Space
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope Interferometer, and its remarkable acuity, astronomers were able for the first time to witness the appearance of a shell of dusty gas around a star that had just erupted, and follow its evolution for more than 100 days.
New Hubble Space Telescope observations of six spectacular galaxy clusters acting as gravitational lenses have given significant insights into the early stages of the Universe. Scientists have found the largest sample of very distant galaxies seen to date: ten promising candidates thought to lie at a distance of 13 billion light-years (~redshift 7.5).
For the first time, a team of international researchers has found a way to view the accretion disks surrounding black holes and verify that their true electromagnetic spectra match what astronomers have long predicted they would be.
The Pinwheel galaxy is gussied up in infrared light in a new picture from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
The same Ohio State University researcher who is helping rovers navigate on Mars is leading a new effort to help humans navigate on the moon.
A contender for the title of brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy has been unearthed in the dusty metropolis of the galaxy's center.
Mars once hosted vast lakes, flowing rivers and a variety of other wet environments that had the potential to support life, according to two new studies based on data from the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) and other instruments on board NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).
Several snowmobiles navigated speedily over arctic ice and snow in Alaska's outback in late June. This scene might seem ordinary except that the recently unveiled snowmobiles are unmanned, autonomous, toy-size robots called SnoMotes – the first prototype network of their kind envisioned to rove treacherous areas of the Arctic and Antarctic capturing more accurate measurements that will help scientists better understand what is causing the well-documented melting of ice in those regions.
Astronomers have uncovered an extreme stellar machine -- a galaxy in the very remote universe pumping out stars at a surprising rate of up to 4,000 per year. In comparison, our own Milky Way galaxy turns out an average of just 10 stars per year.
Asteroids with moons, which scientists call binary asteroids, are common in the solar system. A longstanding question has been how the majority of such moons are formed. In this week's issue of the journal Nature, a trio of astronomers from Maryland and France say the surprising answer is sunlight, which can increase or decrease the spin rate of an asteroid.
A newly developed nano-sized electronic device is an important step toward helping astronomers see invisible light dating from the creation of the universe.
Efforts to harness the energy potential of Earth's ocean winds could soon gain an important new tool: global satellite maps from NASA. Scientists have been creating maps using nearly a decade of data from NASA's QuikSCAT satellite that reveal ocean areas where winds could produce energy.
Another blogger here, who is generally so far off the mark that I don't want to point to his earlier discussion, had some odd things to say about the "Pioneer anomaly," the unexplained deviation of the two Pioneer spacecraft from their predicted trajectory as they pass through the outer reaches of the solar system.
A much more cogent discussion has just appeared.
Scientists have long anguished over how little is known about Mercury, the innermost of the four terrestrial planetary bodies in our solar system.
The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles.
