News

Astronomers Find Smallest Extrasolar Planet Yet Around Normal Star

01/25/2006 08:00AM

Astronomers Find Smallest Extrasolar Planet Yet Around Normal Star

Using an armada of telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found the smallest planet ever detected around a normal star outside our solar system. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

It's big - but is it any good?

01/24/2006 08:00AM

It's big - but is it any good?

This week's review contest winner takes a look through Meade's big 56mm Plossl to see what's on the other side.

Dusty Planetary Disks Around Two Nearby Stars Resemble Our Kuiper Belt

01/23/2006 08:00AM

Dusty Planetary Disks Around Two Nearby Stars Resemble Our Kuiper Belt

These two bright debris disks of ice and dust appear to be the equivalent of our own solar system's Kuiper Belt, a ring of icy rocks outside the orbit of Neptune and the source of short-period comets. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

The Milky Way Galaxy is Warped

01/23/2006 01:19AM

The Milky Way Galaxy is Warped

UMass and Berkeley astrophysicists belive that two of the Milky Way's satellite galaxies - the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds - are interacting with dark matter in the Milky Way to create a mysterious warp in our galactic disk. The warp, which extends across the entire 200,000-light year diameter of the galaxy, has been described by the researchers in terms of a rather simple mathematical model.

New Horizons is on a Fast Track to Pluto

01/21/2006 03:20AM

New Horizons is on a Fast Track to Pluto

The New Horizons spacecraft will cross the entire 3 billion mile span of the solar system and conduct flyby studies of Pluto and Charon in 2015. NASA's most powerful launcher, the Atlas 5, rocketed the spacecraft away from Earth at a record 36,000 miles per hour. At that speed, and with a "gravity slingshot assist" it will get from Jupiter in 2007, the spacecraft will take over 9 years to reach Pluto.

Huge "Superbubble" of Gas Blowing Out of Milky Way

01/19/2006 08:00AM

Huge "Superbubble" of Gas Blowing Out of Milky Way

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) have discovered a huge "superbubble" of hydrogen gas rising nearly 10,000 light-years above the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

Pulsar Spinning at an Incredible 716 Revolutions per Second

01/18/2006 12:10PM

Pulsar Spinning at an Incredible 716 Revolutions per Second

A team of astronomers at McGill University in Montreal has discovered the fastest-spinning Pulsar ever found. The 20-mile diameter superdense Pulsar, spinning at 716 revolutions per second, whirls twice as fast as the average kitchen blender.

A Wooden Refractor? A novel idea from a very creative artist.

01/17/2006 08:00AM

A Wooden Refractor? A novel idea from a very creative artist.

The Travel Star 11 gets the once over in this week's review contest winner.

Vanderbuilt Astronomers Map the Star Forming Winds of M42 -- the Orion Nebula

01/16/2006 01:39PM

Vanderbuilt Astronomers Map the Star Forming Winds of M42 -- the Orion Nebula

Located at a distance of about 1,600 light years from Earth, the Orion Nebula is the brightest diffuse nebula in the sky and is visible to the naked eye. Utilizing new data from the Hubble Space Telescope, Vanderbuilt University astronomers have been mapping the winds blowing in M42 to get a better idea of how stellar forming currents are incubating new stars.

Stardust Capsule Lands in Utah Desert

01/15/2006 05:48PM

Stardust Capsule Lands in Utah Desert

Nasa's Stardust sample return capsule touched down at 10:10 U.T.

The girl who named a planet

01/15/2006 05:45AM

The girl who named a planet

How the ninth planet was named by an 11-year-old girl.

The World’s Most Famous Equation Turned 100 in 2005... and Now it is Proven Accurate to One Part in a Million

01/14/2006 05:20PM

The World’s Most Famous Equation Turned 100 in 2005... and Now it is Proven Accurate to One Part in a Million

In 1905 Albert Einstein published three landmark papers that revolutionized our understanding of the Universe -- papers on Brownian motion, the Photoelectric Effect, and Special Relativity. The most famous formula in science, E=mc(squared), turned 100 years old in 2005. To mark the occasion, 2005 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of Physics. Now, physicists at MIT, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US, and the Institute Laue Langevin (ILL) in France have determined that the formula predicting that energy and mass are equivalent is correct to an incredible accuracy of better than one part in a million.

Cornell Astronomers Ask: What Happens When Worlds Collide?

01/14/2006 12:47AM

Cornell Astronomers Ask: What Happens When Worlds Collide?

In about five billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies will collide much like the two galaxies NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 in this image, which are known as the Antennae Galaxies. Most of the hundreds of billions of stars in each of the galaxies will never actually collide, but will pass rather freely between each other with little damage. This however, will not be the case for the interstellar matter consisting largely of clouds of debris, dust, and gas. The high relative velocities and pressures between the interacting interstellar clouds will pull, twist, and distort the two galaxies and trigger a firestorm of star formation.

Reshaping Nikon's Film Camera Assortment

01/12/2006 06:29PM

Reshaping Nikon's Film Camera Assortment

Nikon to End Production of Most Film Cameras

XMM-Newton Detects Debris Circling a Black Hole at One Tenth the Speed of Light

01/12/2006 02:39AM

XMM-Newton Detects Debris Circling a Black Hole at One Tenth the Speed of Light

Astrophysicists from the University of Oxford, using the European Space Agency (ESA) XMM (X-ray Multi-Mirror) Newton Observatory, have been able to trace gas and debris on a complete journey around a massive black hole, clocking it at one tenth the speed of light as it swirls around the accretion disk.