Oct 31
The dust around
super-massive black holes
About 50% of the
super-massive black holes,
which lie at the centre of
most galaxies, are hidden
from our view by large
clouds of dust. This dust is
thought to be in a
ring-shaped structure called
a 'torus'
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 28
A clearer picture of galaxy mergers
The formation and evolution
of galaxies almost certainly
involves mergers of
galaxies, after all, we see
several examples of the
process in action, and it is
difficult to escape from the
notion that the
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 26
So what happened to ROSAT?
Despite a good deal of attention from the international media in the days prior to ROSAT's re-entry, no-one seems to have payed much attention to the doomed satellite, that, at 03:50 CEST (Central
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 24
WD 0806-661 B: the coolest brown dwarf yet
Its atmosphere has a temperature between 27 and 70°C and it's the coldest brown dwarf so far discovered (in the image it's labeled as "cold companion"). At a distance of 63 light years from Earth, it is
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 21
A comet shower on Eta Corvi
At the "Signposts of
Planets" meeting, organized
by NASA, which ended
yesterday at the Goddard
Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, Carey Lisse, of
Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 19
Dark matter mystery in dwarf galaxies
We have no idea what it's
made of and it can't be
observed directly. We can
only infer its presence via
its influence on the
so-called ordinary matter.
We are talking, of course,
about dark matter, the
exotic
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 17
New alert as ROSAT begins re-entry
Just as the spotlight moves
away from the fall of the
UARS satellite into the
Pacific ocean so another
unusually large re-entry is
starting to make the news,
and this time it's a more
famous satellite
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 14
G299.2-2.9, an aging supernova remnant
This image, released by
NASA, shows the remains of a
type Ia supernova explosion.
This type of supernova
occurs in a binary system,
where a white dwarf, after
having acquired mass from
its
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 12
How life survived the Snowball Earth
During the long history of
the Earth there have been
two, perhaps three, global
glaciation events, during
which the planet effectively
became a giant snowball.
These events, nicknamed
"Snowball
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 10
Uranus was hit more than once? Perhaps...
One of the strange things in
our solar system is the fact
that the spin axis of Uranus
is inclined by 98° to the
plane of its orbit, so that
it literally "rolls" along
its orbit rather than
staying upright like the
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 7
Discovering planets in the Hubble archive
Ever more discoveries are
made as a result of
analysing data in the
archives of the various
astronomical observatories.
The latest example comes
from a re-analysis of star
images from the Hubble Space
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 5
Neptunes in resonance around Kepler-18
During the meeting of the
American Astronomical
Society’s Division of
Planetary Science
Conference, now taking place
in Nantes, a team of
researchers from the
University of Texas at
Austin, have
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
Oct 3
Arp 220, supernova champion
Arp 220, an object which
formed as the result of the
merger of two gas-rich
galaxies, is the home of
very active star formation,
induced by the increased gas
density resulting from the
collision. This merger
>>> |
|
 |
|
|
