Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development. It is the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.
In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble found five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch … Read the rest of this article
RadioAstron, effectively the largest radio telescope ever built, is up and running.
The telescope’s main component, a 10-metre radio dish aboard the spacecraft Spectr-R, launched in July to an oblong orbit that extends between 10,000 and more than 300,000 kilometres from Earth.
By coordinating observations with radio telescopes on Earth in a technique called … Read the rest of this article
A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA’s Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature.
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This animation illustrates two wildly different …
AAVSO Alert Notice 450Dr. Paula Szkody (University of Washington) has requested the help of AAVSO observers in monitoring the WZ Sge-type cataclysmic variable SDSS J080434.20+510349.2 (SDSS0804+51) in support of Hubble Space Telescope ultraviolet spectroscopic observations scheduled for 20:52:40-23:32:35 2011 November 3 UT (the night of … Read the rest of this article
NASA has released an interactive, educational video game called NetworKing that depicts how the Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) network operates. The release of the video game coincides with the close of World Space Week, Oct. 4-10.
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In the game, as a new Network Manager, your job will be to build and upgrade a complex communications network in order to …
Behold your galactic center. This NASA Hubble Space Telescope infrared mosaic image represents the sharpest survey of the Galactic Center to date. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 x 115 light-years. This sweeping infrared panorama offers a nearby laboratory for how massive … Read the rest of this article
A fleet of spacecraft including ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral have shown unprecedented details close to a supermassive black hole. They reveal huge ‘bullets’ of gas being driven away from the ‘gravitational monster’.
Active galaxy Markarian 509 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope’s WFPC2. Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Kriss (STScI) and J. de Plaa (SRON)
The black hole that the … Read the rest of this article
A new video from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.
This image obtained by the framing camera on NASA’s Dawn spacecraft shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA
The data obtained by Dawn’s framing camera, used to produce the visualizations, will help scientists determine … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has reached a major milestone in its development. The mirrors that will fly aboard the telescope have completed the coating process at Quantum Coating Inc. in Moorestown, N.J.
The telescope’s mirrors have been coated with a microscopically thin layer of gold, selected for its ability to properly reflect infrared light from the mirrors into the … Read the rest of this article
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a new moon circling Pluto. P4, as it is currently called, is the smallest moon yet found orbiting Pluto, with an estimated size of 13–34 km. By comparison, Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, is 1043 km across, while Nix and Hydra are 32–113 km wide. The tiny, new satellite popped up in a Hubble … Read the rest of this article
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