News

Peculiar outbursts of X-rays coming from a black hole have provided evidence that it has a mass of about 10,000 Suns, which would place it in a possible new class of black holes.

Scientists, trying to recreate conditions that existed just a few millionths of a second after the big bang that started the universe, have run into a mysterious problem -- some of the reactions they are getting don't mesh with what they thought they were supposed to see. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

In the last several years, researchers on NSF-supported projects have found new asteroids, documented diving patterns of sea mammals and located the feeding area of an endangered bird. This is standard science; it is what researchers do. But these researchers were still in school. Some were in the third grade. <b>NOTE: French, German, Italian, and Spanish translations follow...</b>

Eons ago, giant clouds in space may have led to global extinctions, according to two recent technical papers supported by NASA's Astrobiology Institute. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

If you like a load of strong and simple in your mounts, this winning review is for you...

Astromart sponsor, Larry Patriarca of Universal Astronomics, phoned Todd recently to ask about his plans for the site. Larry's report is reprinted here...

WASHINGTON -- To ensure continuation of the extraordinary scientific output of the Hubble Space Telescope and to prepare for its eventual de-orbiting, NASA should send a space shuttle mission, not a robotic one, says a new congressionally requested report from the National Academies' National Research Council. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

Unlike humans, stars are born with all the weight they will ever have. A human's birth weight varies by just a few pounds, but a star's weight ranges from less than a tenth to more than 100 times the mass of our Sun. Although astronomers know that stars come in a variety of masses, they are still stumped when it comes to figuring out if stars have a weight limit at birth. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

Computer simulations of how black holes accrete matter show surprising violence and turbulence, challenging many commonly held assumptions about the nature of this phenomenon. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have measured the motion across the sky of a galaxy nearly 2.4 million light-years from Earth. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

How do you hide something as big and bright as a galaxy? You smother it in cosmic dust. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope saw through such dust to uncover a hidden population of monstrously bright galaxies approximately 11 billion light-years away. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

What happens when a galaxy falls in with the wrong crowd? The irregular galaxy NGC 1427A is a spectacular example of the resulting stellar rumble. Under the gravitational grasp of a large gang of galaxies, called the Fornax cluster, the small bluish galaxy is plunging headlong into the group at 600 kilometers per second or nearly 400 miles per second. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

Jupiter shows intense X-ray emission associated with auroras in its polar regions. Extended monitoring by Chandra showed that the auroral X-rays are caused by highly charged particles crashing into the atmosphere above Jupiter's poles. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A new theory of how planets form finds havens of stability amid violent turbulence in the swirling gas that surrounds a young star. These protected areas are where planets can begin to form without being destroyed. The theory will be published in the February issue of the journal Icarus. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>

Using an innovative camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists have captured images of a radiation belt inside the rings of Saturn and have the clearest picture yet of the planet’s giant magnetosphere, according to a mid-year report of the spacecraft published today in the journal Science. <b>NOTE: French, German, and Italian translations follow...</b>