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Ticking stellar time bomb identified — 18 Nov 12:30
Dawn enters asteroid belt - for good — 18 Nov 09:55
Close-up movie shows hidden details in the birth of super-suns — 17 Nov 12:29
Ghostly 'spokes' puff out from Saturn's ring's — 15 Nov 17:06
2 Earth-sized bodies with oxygen rich atmospheres found - but they're stars not planets — 13 Nov 14:34
ESA spacecraft may help unravel cosmic mystery — 13 Nov 14:15
Exoplanets clue to sun's curious chemistry — 12 Nov 09:47
Swift, XMM-Newton satellites tune into a middleweight black hole — 11 Nov 14:03
Rapid star formation spotted in 'stellar nurseries' of infant galaxies — 11 Nov 11:18
'Dropouts' pinpoint earliest galaxies — 8 Nov 12:13
New type of supernova explosion reported; predicted by theoretical physicists at UCSB — 6 Nov 11:06
Rapid supernova could be new class of exploding star — 6 Nov 11:03
Carbon atmosphere discovered on neutron star — 5 Nov 13:30
U of A physicist identifies mysterious core left by exploding star — 5 Nov 12:53
Shedding light on the cosmic skeleton — 3 Nov 11:50
Rare space experiment gives clues about the fundamental structure of the universe — 3 Nov 10:01
'Ultra-primitive' particles found in comet dust — 3 Nov 09:08
Precise picture of early Universe supports 'dark matter' theory — 3 Nov 09:02
Solar winds triggered by magnetic fields — 2 Nov 16:45
Opening up a colourful cosmic jewel box — 29 Oct 11:21
Astronomers explore 'last blank space' on map of the Universe — 29 Oct 10:26
Scientists use world's fastest supercomputer to model origins of the unseen universe — 27 Oct 17:53
Galaxy cluster smashes distance record — 26 Oct 16:28
32 new exoplanets found — 20 Oct 13:56
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Last updated: Wednesday, 18 November 2009 12:30 GMT
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Ghostly 'spokes' puff out from Saturn's ring's

Ghostly 'spokes' puff out from Saturn's ring's

— 15 November 17:06

Massive, bright clouds of tiny ice particles hover above the darkened rings of Saturn in an image captured by the Cassini spacecraft on 22 September 2009 around the time of Saturn's equinox. During this period, sunlight hits the rings edge-on and shines directly over the equator. The levitating icy particle clouds, which are known as 'spokes' and are as wide as 10,000 kilometres (6,000 miles), appear particularly dramatic because of the unique lighting geometry of the equinox period... — full story


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Artist's impression of a baby star still surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming. Using ESO's very successful HARPS spectrograph, a team of astronomers has found that Sun-like stars which host planets have destroyed their lithium much more efficiently than planet-free stars. This finding does not only shed light on the low levels of this chemical element in the Sun, solving a long-standing mystery, but also provides astronomers with a very efficient way to pick out the stars most likely to host planets. It is not clear what causes the lithium to be destroyed. The general idea is that the planets or the presence of the protoplanetary disc disturb the interior of the star, bringing the lithium deeper down into the star than usual, into regions where the temperature is so hot that it is destroyed, (c) ESO/L. CalcadaExoplanets clue to sun's curious chemistry

— 12 November 09:47

'For almost 10 years we have tried to find out what distinguishes stars with planetary systems from their barren cousins,' says Garik Israelian, lead author of a paper appearing this... — full story

The FORS1 instrument on the ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) at ESO's Paranal Observatory was used to take this exquisitely sharp close up view of the colourful Jewel Box cluster, NGC 4755. The telescope's huge mirror allowed very short exposure times: just 2.6 seconds through a blue filter (B), 1.3 seconds through a yellow/green filter (V) and 1.3 seconds through a red filter (R). The field of view spans about seven arcminutes, (c) ESOOpening up a colourful cosmic jewel box

— 29 October 11:21

Star clusters are among the most visually alluring and astrophysically fascinating objects in the sky. One of the most spectacular nestles deep in the southern skies near the Southern... — full story

On 19 October 2009, the team who built the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, better known as HARPS, the spectrograph for ESO's 3.6-metre telescope, reported on the incredible discovery of some 32 new exoplanets, cementing HARPS's position as the world's foremost exoplanet hunter. One of these is surrounding the star Gliese 667 C, which belongs to a triple system. The 6 Earth-mass exoplanet circulates around its low-mass host star at a distance equal to only 1/20th of the Earth-Sun distance. The host star is a companion to two other low-mass stars, which are seen here in the distance, (c) ESO32 new exoplanets found

— 20 October 13:56

'HARPS is a unique, extremely high precision instrument that is ideal for discovering alien worlds,' says Stephane Udry, who made the announcement. 'We have now completed our initial... — full story

This image shows an artist's conception of the bubble around our solar system moving through the interstellar medium, the matter that fills the local region of our galaxy. New observations from the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn suggest the shape resembles something like a slippery ball moving through smoke, (c) NASA/JPL-Caltech/JHUAPLCassini data help redraw shape of solar system

— 16 October 13:45

Images from the Ion and Neutral Camera on NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere, the region of the sun's influence, may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing... — full story

Astronomers obtained this portrait of Barnard's Galaxy using the Wide Field Imager attached to the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope at ESO's La Silla Observatory in northern Chile. Also known as NGC 6822, this dwarf irregular galaxy is one of the Milky Way's galactic neighbours. The dwarf galaxy has no shortage of stellar splendour and pyrotechnics. Reddish nebulae in this image reveal regions of active star formation, wherein young, hot stars heat up nearby gas clouds. Also prominent in the upper left of this new image is a striking bubble-shaped nebula. At the nebula's centre, a clutch of massive, scorching stars send waves of matter smashing into surrounding interstellar material, generating a glowing structure that appears ring-like from our perspective. Other similar ripples of heated matter thrown out by feisty young stars are dotted across Barnard's Galaxy, (c) ESOThe Milky Way's tiny but tough galactic neighbour

— 14 October 12:16

In the new ESO image, Barnard's Galaxy glows beneath a sea of foreground stars in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). At the relatively close distance of... — full story

Not surprisingly, interacting galaxies have a dramatic effect on each other. Studies have revealed that as galaxies approach one another massive amounts of gas are pulled from each galaxy towards the centre of the other, until ultimately, the two merge into one massive galaxy. NGC 2623 is in the late stages of the merging process, with the centres of the original galaxy pair now merged into one nucleus, but stretching out from the centre are two tidal tails of young stars, a strong indicator that a merger has taken place. During such a collision, the dramatic exchange of mass and gases initiates star formation, seen here in both the tails. The prominent lower tail is richly populated with bright star clusters - 100 of them have been found in these observations. These star clusters may have formed as part of a loop of stretched material associated with the northern tail, or they may have formed from debris falling back onto the nucleus. In addition to this active star-forming region, both galactic arms harbour very young stars in the early stages of their evolutionary journey, (c) NASA, ESA and A. Evans (Stony Brook University, New York)Sky merger yields sparkling dividends

— 13 October 10:21

A recent NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image captures what appears to be one very bright and bizarre galaxy, but is actually the result of a pair of spiral galaxies that resemble... — full story


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Chandra X-ray image of dark energy, (c) NASA, CXC, SAO, A. Vikhlinin et al.Dark energy found stifling growth in Universe

— 17 December 10:30

For the first time, astronomers have clearly seen the effects of 'dark energy' on the most massive collapsed objects in the Universe using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. By tracking... — full story


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