In pictures (Page 2)
Two dying stars reborn as one
White dwarfs are dead stars that pack a Sun's-worth of matter into an Earth-sized ball. Scientists have just discovered an amazing pair of white dwarfs whirling around each other once every 39 minutes. This is the shortest-period pair of white…
Biodiversity improves water quality in streams through a division of labour
Biologically diverse streams are better at cleaning up pollutants than less rich waterways, and Bradley Cardinale, an assistant professor at the U-M School of Natural Resources and Environment, says he has uncovered the long-sought mechanism…
Telescope ferrets out planet-hunting targets
Astronomers have come up with a new way of identifying close, faint stars with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer satellite. The technique should help in the hunt for planets that lie beyond our solar system, because nearby, hard-to-see stars…
When is an asteroid not an asteroid?
On March 29, 1807, German astronomer Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers spotted Vesta as a pinprick of light in the sky. Two hundred and four years later, as NASA's Dawn spacecraft prepares to begin orbiting this intriguing world, scientists now know how…
The rose-red glow of star formation
The object dominating this image may resemble a pool of spilled blood, but rather than being associated with death, such regions of ionised hydrogen - known as HII regions - are sites of creation with high rates of recent star birth. NGC 371…
A very cool pair of brown dwarfs
Brown dwarfs are essentially failed stars: they lack enough mass for gravity to trigger the nuclear reactions that make stars shine. The newly discovered brown dwarf, identified as CFBDSIR 1458+10B, is the dimmer member of a binary brown dwarf…
Cassini spacecraft observes seasonal rains on Titan
As spring continues to unfold on Saturn, April showers on the planet's largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rain to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft…
The drama of starbirth
The star-forming region NGC 6729 is part of one of the closest stellar nurseries to the Earth and hence one of the best studied. This new image from ESO's Very Large Telescope gives a close-up view of a section of this strange and fascinating…
Japan quake may have shortened Earth days, moved axis
The March 11, magnitude 9.0 earthquake in Japan may have shortened the length of each Earth day and shifted its axis. But don't worry-you won't notice the difference…
NASA shows topography of tsunami-damaged Japan city
The topography surrounding Sendai, Japan is clearly visible in this combined radar image and topographic view generated with data from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) acquired in 2000. On 11 March a magnitude 8.9 earthquake struck…
