Apr. 30
596 Scheila: certainly an asteroid
On 13th December last year we ran a news item reporting the sudden increase in brightness of 596 Scheila, supposedly an asteroid, but whose behaviour led to suspicions that it might actually be
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Apr. 29
55 Cancri e: the superdense planet
The results of a study of
the planetary system around
the star 55 Cancri A, 40
light years from Earth,
carried out by Rebekah
Dawson (astronomy PhD
student at Harvard) and
Daniel Fabrycky
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Apr. 27
The Tycho supernova had a companion
A group of Chinese astronomers led by Fangjun Lu (Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing) have shown that the progenitor of the Galactic supernova that exploded in
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Apr. 26
Pluto: and if it were a comet?
Poor Pluto, already thrown
out of the club of the
"normal" planets of our
solar system, could also
risk loosing the title of
dwarf planet, in favour of
that of comet. This
unexpected (and perhaps
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Apr. 22
Giant supernovae in dwarf galaxies
"It's like finding a Sumo wrestler sitting in a little 'Smart car'!" This is how Don Neill, member of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer team (California Institute of Technology in Pasadena) described finding
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Apr. 21
The colour of extraterrestrial plants
Attempting to predict what
might be the dominant colour
of plants, if they exist, on
planets in other planetary
systems is something that
researchers sometimes try.
This time, a possible
scenario has
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Apr. 19
The SDO sees the birth of sunspots
The Helioseismic and
Magnetic Imager (HMI) of the
Solar Dynamics Observatory
(SDO) has allowed a team of
researchers of the
University of Central
Lancashire to follow, over a
period of
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Apr. 18
2011 GP59, a blinking asteroid
On the night between the 8th and 9th of April this year, a near-Earth asteroid was discovered at the Observatorio Astronomico de Mallorca in Andalucia, Spain. Preliminary calculations determined that it
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Apr. 15
Giant stars uncovered in X-rays
Thanks to the X-ray space
telescope Chandra, some
extremely massive stars have
been identified within the
Galactic plane, and may be
members of a large
population of such stars
hidden by the
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Apr. 14
Extremely remote galaxy analysed
Results are soon to appear, in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, of a study of the mean age of stars in a galaxy whose light was emitted when the Universe was only 950 million
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Apr. 13
Our solar system is unusual
Some decidedly unexpected conclusions have been drawn in an article by Sean N. Raymond and Philip J. Armitage (University of Colorado, Boulder) and others, soon to appear in the journal Astronomy &
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Apr. 12
Revealed: the risks of Gagarin's flight
During a meeting of the space craft constructors, Energia, a veteran of Soviet astronautics, Boris Chertok, who worked closely with Sergei Korolev during the preparations for Gagarin's historic flight, made
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Apr. 11
Is Titan volcanic or not?
It now seems slightly less
likely that the surface and
atmosphere of Titan are
shaped by cryo-volcanism,
the eruption of ice caused
by the internal heat of the
satellite. Until now the
phenomenon was
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Apr. 8 Delayed jets in Herbig-Haro 34
Studies conducted with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope on Herbig-Haro 34, a star near the start of its life in the constellation of Orion, have showed that the clumps of gas in one of its two jets are
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Apr. 8 A new meteoritic mineral
It's been called Wassonite and is made up of only sulphur and titanium. These elements form a unique crystal structure with such tiny dimensions (measuring only 50x450 nanometres, 100th the width
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Apr. 7 Basset dedicates a poster to the Shuttle
What a ride it's been! This
is the title Brian Basset
has given to his cartoon,
that on NASA's request, he
drew for the 30th
anniversary of the Shuttle,
and the last year of service
of the first re-usable
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Apr. 6 The imprint of dark supernovae
We are used to thinking of supernovae as among the most luminous phenomena in the Universe, stellar explosions visible even from billions of light years away. But incredibly, it is estimated that about 20%
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Apr. 5 The Rho Ophiuchi complex in IR
At approximately 430 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Ophiuchus, lies one of the nearest regions of star formation. The nebular complex normally referred to as Rho Ophiuchi (because
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Apr. 4 The glacial infancy of Earth and Mars
A group of researchers from Imperial Collage London, led by Richard Court (Department of Earth Science and Engineering) have found that the climatic conditions on Earth and Mars 4 billion years ago were
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Apr. 1 Impact waves in planetary rings
In the last ten years we have had confirmation that impacts of minor bodies on the planets, especially Jupiter and Saturn, are not events that happened only eons in the past, but are an ongoing
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