Astronomy News and Research

LRO's first moon images

Saturday, July 04, 2009 00:00 MST

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft's two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well, and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds).

Astronomer's new guide to the galaxy: Largest map of cold dust revealed

Saturday, July 04, 2009 00:00 MST

Astronomers have unveiled an unprecedented new atlas of the inner regions of the Milky Way, our home galaxy, peppered with thousands of previously undiscovered dense knots of cold cosmic dust -- the potential birthplaces of new stars. Made using observations from the APEX telescope in Chile, this survey is the largest map of cold dust so far, and will prove an invaluable map for observations made with the forthcoming ALMA telescope, as well as the recently launched ESA Herschel space telescope.

Space shuttle science shows how 1908 Tunguska explosion was caused by a comet

Friday, July 03, 2009 00:00 MST

The mysterious 1908 Tunguska explosion that leveled 830 square miles of Siberian forest was almost certainly caused by a comet entering the Earth's atmosphere, says new Cornell University research. The conclusion is supported by an unlikely source: the exhaust plume from the NASA space shuttle launched a century later.

New class of black holes discovered

Friday, July 03, 2009 00:00 MST

A new class of black hole, more than 500 times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered by an international team of astronomers.

New focus on the moon

Friday, July 03, 2009 00:00 MST

Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera releases its first images of the moon

Intense heat killed the Universe's would-be galaxies, researchers say

Thursday, July 02, 2009 00:00 MST

Millions of would-be galaxies failed to develop after being exposed to intense heat from the first stars and black holes formed in the early Universe, according to new research.

Largest ever survey of very distant galaxy clusters completed

Wednesday, July 01, 2009 00:00 MST

An international team of researchers led by Gillian Wilson, an astronomer at the University of California, Riverside, has completed the largest ever survey designed to find very distant clusters of galaxies. Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations. SpARCS is designed to find clusters, snapped as they appeared long ago in time, when the universe was 6 billion years old or younger.

New instrument has potential to detect water deep underground on Mars

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 00:00 MST

With the whoosh of compressed gas and the whir of unspooling wire, a team of Boulder scientists and engineers tested a new instrument prototype that might be used to detect groundwater deep inside Mars.

Salty ocean in the depths of Enceladus

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 00:00 MST

Discovery could have implications for the search for extraterrestrial life

Galaxies coming of age in cosmic blobs

Monday, June 29, 2009 00:00 MST

The "coming of age" of galaxies and black holes has been pinpointed, thanks to new data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes. This discovery helps resolve the true nature of gigantic blobs of gas observed around very young galaxies.

Jets on Saturn's moon Enceladus not geysers from underground ocean, says study

Sunday, June 28, 2009 00:00 MST

Water vapor jets that spew from the surface of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus are not really geysers from an underground ocean as initially envisioned by planetary scientists, according to a study led by the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Milky Way's super-efficient particle accelerators caught in the act

Sunday, June 28, 2009 00:00 MST

Thanks to a unique "ballistic study" that combines data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have now solved a long-standing mystery of the Milky Way's particle accelerators. They show in a paper published today on Science Express that cosmic rays from our galaxy are very efficiently accelerated in the remnants of exploded stars.

Better looks at Mars minerals for instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter

Saturday, June 27, 2009 00:00 MST

A new orbit at an earlier time of day is increasing the sensitivity and efficiency of ASU's THEMIS multi-band camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft.

NASA lunar mission successfully enters moon orbit

Friday, June 26, 2009 00:00 MST

After a four and a half day journey from the Earth,the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has successfully enteredorbit around the moon. Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space FlightCenter in Greenbelt, Md., confirmed the spacecraft's lunar orbitinsertion at 6:27 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

Magnetic field on bright star Vega

Thursday, June 25, 2009 00:00 MST

Astronomy and Astrophysics publishes the first detection of a magnetic field on the bright star Vega. Using the NARVAL spectropolarimeter of the Bernard-Lyot telescope on top of the Pic du Midi (France), astronomers clearly observe the magnetically-induced effect in the spectrum of Vega, thereby showing that the star possesses a magnetic field, something unknown so far.