News
Size Of Pluto's Moon Charon Determined With Unprecedented Accuracy
MIT and Willams College Astronomers used the 8-meter Gemini South, the 6.5-meter Clay, the 2.5-meter du Pont, and the 0.8-meter Cerro Armazones telescopes in Chile to take advantage of a rare stellar occultation that permitted Charon's size to be determined with unprecedented accuracy -- 606 km ± 8 km.
U of Iowa Astronomers Find a Star Orbiting a Black Hole in M82
University of Iowa researchers have found a star orbiting a "medium-sized" black hole -- about 1,000 times more massive than the sun -- in the nearby galaxy M82. The discovery may help confirm the existence of a class of black holes that are larger than black holes produced by the collapse of a single normal star and smaller than the supermassive black holes found in the center of galaxies.
The New Year Arrived One Second Late
The speed of the Earth's rotation is continually changing -- partly due to varying weather patterns and geological disturbances, but more importantly due to the friction of tides raised by the Sun and Moon, which cause a systematic lengthening of the day. To account for this gradual slowing down of the Earth's rotation, a leap second was added at the end of 2005 by the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO), thus delaying the arrival of 2006 by one second.
Astrophysicists Determine Sun's Location in Milky Way
Astrophysicists have determined the location of our Sun in the Milky Way with an accuracy of 2% through the use of two tools: 1) the Very Large Base Array (VLBA), a system of ten 25 meter diameter dish antennas spread from Hawaii to St. Croix in the Caribbean that all work together as a single telescopic system roughly the size of the Earth and 2) Trigonometric Parallax as the Earth moves in its orbit around the Sun.
Wanted: Amateur Astronomers to Help in Supernova-Neutrino Research
Ohio State University scientists have thought of a new way to help establish an astronomical linkage between the detection of subatomic particles known as Neutrinos and Supernovae... and their plan relies on the well-connected network of amateur astronomers. Since 2002, there have been at least nine supernovae identified in galaxies within about 30 million light years of our Milky Way, and more than half of those were discovered by amateur astronomers. Today's so-called amateur astronomers aren't really so amateur. With the quality of equipment in their hands, they can be though of as "professional amateurs." When a major discovery is made, they know as soon as the professionals do.
Neutron Star Collisions Linked to to Mysterious Cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts
Cosmic Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs), the most powerful explosions in the universe, have the extreme brilliance of a billion billion Suns and occur several times a day -- But very little is known about them. Two types of Gamma Ray Bursts have been observed 1) Long ones that last for tens or hundreds of seconds, and 2) Short bursts, which last a few milliseconds to a second. Long bursts are believed to result from the death of massive stars only a few million years old in young and vigorously star forming galaxies. Short Gamma Ray Bursts, until now shrouded in mystery, are being linked through recent research to the collision of two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole. The objects slowly approach each other as their orbits shrink over hundreds of millions of years. Eventually, the two objects get so close together that they simply shred each other apart in a cataclysmic explosion.
Buffy Stands Out from the Crowd.
A team of astronomers working in Canada, France and the United States have discovered an unusual small body orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune, in the region astronomers call the Kuiper belt. This new object is twice as far from the Sun as Neptune and is roughly half the size of Pluto. The body's highly unusual orbit is difficult to explain using previous theories of the formation of the outer Solar System. <b>NOTE: French and German translations follow (character count too large for subsequent translations - Ed.)</b>
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