West Virginia University researchers have helped discover the most massive neutron star to date, a breakthrough uncovered through the Green Bank Telescope in Pocahontas County. The neutron star, called J0740+6620, is a rapidly spinning pulsar that packs 2.17 times the…
Tag: Astronomy
VISTA unveils a new image of the Large Magellanic Cloud
The Large Magellanic Cloud , or LMC, is one of our nearest galactic neighbors, at only 163 000 light years from Earth. With its sibling the Small Magellanic Cloud , these are among the nearest dwarf satellite galaxies to the…
Gravitational lensing provides a new measurement of the expansion of the universe
Amid ongoing uncertainty around the value of the Hubble Constant, uncertainty largely created by issues around measuring distances to objects in the galaxy, scientists who used a new distance technique have derived a different Hubble value, one “somewhat higher than…
Saturn’s rings shine in Hubble’s latest portrait
Saturn is so beautiful that astronomers cannot resist using the Hubble Space Telescope to take yearly snapshots of the ringed world when it is at its closest distance to Earth. These images, however, are more than just beauty shots. They…
‘Ringing’ black hole validates Einstein’s general relativity 10 years ahead of schedule
Gravitational wave ‘tones’ detected following the merger of two black holes confirm the decades-old
The rare molecule weighing in on the birth of planets
Astronomers using one of the most advanced radio telescopes have discovered a rare molecule in the dust and gas disc around a young star – and it may provide an answer to one of the conundrums facing astronomers. The star,…
Clemson physicists lead rocket missions to explore Earth’s atmosphere
Clemson University physicists will conduct a pair of three-year rocket missions funded by NASA Helio
A Goldilocks zone for planet size
Research redefines lower limit for planet size habitability
Sandia experiments at temperature of sun offer solutions to solar model problems
Sandia’s Z machine helps reconcile sun’s energy and composition
Closing in on elusive particles
Major steps forward in understanding neutrino properties
Space dragons: Researchers observe energy consumption in quasars
Quasars are the Universe’s brightest beacons; shining with magnitudes more luminosity than entire galaxies and the stars they contain. In the center of this light, at the heart of a quasar, researchers think, is an all-consuming black hole. Researchers, for…
Busy older stars outpace stellar youngsters, new study shows
The oldest stars in our Galaxy are also the busiest, moving more rapidly than their younger counterparts in and out of the disk of the Milky Way, according to new analysis carried out at the University of Birmingham. The findings…
Astronomers find a golden glow from a distant stellar collision
UMD-led team re-examined data from a 2016 gamma-ray burst and found a signature that perfectly match
Astronomers find a golden glow from a distant stellar collision
UMD-led team re-examined data from a 2016 gamma-ray burst and found a signature that perfectly match
Best of both worlds: Asteroids and massive mergers
University of Arizona researchers are using the Catalina Sky Survey’s near-Earth object telescopes t
Moon glows brighter than sun in images from NASA’s Fermi
If our eyes could see high-energy radiation called gamma rays, the Moon would appear brighter than the Sun! That’s how NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has seen our neighbor in space for the past decade. Gamma-ray observations are not sensitive…
Automated Observing Network Inaugurated at SOAR Telescope
To provide astronomers with a network of world-class telescopes that can be accessed with a touch of a button, four ground-based astronomical observatories have joined forces to set up the Astronomical Event Observatory Network (AEON): Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), the National Science Foundation’s National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the SOAR Telescope, and Gemini Observatory. With AEON, astronomers will be able to automatically follow up on their astronomical objects of interest, with a range of 0.4-meter to 8-meter telescopes, observing in UV light to infrared.
Automated Observing Network Inaugurated at SOAR Telescope
To provide astronomers with a network of world-class telescopes that can be accessed with a touch of a button, four ground-based astronomical observatories have joined forces to set up the Astronomical Event Observatory Network (AEON): Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), the National Science Foundation’s National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO), the SOAR Telescope, and Gemini Observatory. With AEON, astronomers will be able to automatically follow up on their astronomical objects of interest, with a range of 0.4-meter to 8-meter telescopes, observing in UV light to infrared.
How many Earth-like planets are around sun-like stars?
A new study provides the most accurate estimate of the frequency that planets that are similar to Earth in size and in distance from their host star occur around stars similar to our Sun. Knowing the rate that these potentially…
Fluorescent glow may reveal hidden life in the cosmos
Astronomers have uncovered a new way of searching for life in the cosmos. Harsh ultraviolet radiation flares from red suns, once thought to destroy surface life on planets, might help uncover hidden biospheres. Their radiation could trigger a protective glow from life on exoplanets called biofluorescence, according to new Cornell University research.
Keeping Earth safe from impact: Astronomer worked with international team to conduct global planetary defense exercise
Scientists have discovered nearly all “extinction-scale” near-Earth objects, or NEOs (asteroids larger than one kilometer in diameter) and determined they pose no risk of impact in the near future. But there are still thousands of smaller NEOs that pose a…
Explaining Light-Nuclei Production in Heavy-Ion Nuclear Collisions
Pairs of sub-atomic particles may catalyze reactions that happened moments after the Big Bang. The Science Nuclear physicists smash ions together to create and study the soup of quarks and gluons thought to fill the universe milliseconds after the Big…