- Memories Of A Dedicated Scientist
From Mary, in response to my request for more information about the scientists who gave us the YORP effect: ...
Article - Douglas Blane - Jul 4 2009 - 12:29pm
- Solar Power At Play
For the very first time, astronomers have witnessed the speeding up of an asteroid's rotation, and have shown that it is due to a theoretical effect predicted but never seen before. The international team of scientists used an armada of telescopes to ...
Article - News Staff - Mar 27 2007 - 9:56am
- First X-ray Detection Of A Colliding-wind Binary Beyond The Milky Way
Imagine two stars with winds so powerful that they eject an Earth's worth of material roughly once every month. Next, imagine those two winds colliding head-on. Such titanic collisions produce multimillion-degree gas, which radiates brilliantly in X- ...
Article - News Staff - Jun 29 2007 - 6:37pm
- Cassini Captures Bizarre Hexagon On Saturn
An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with the Cassini mission. This atmospheric feature was already imaged by NASA’s Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft over two decades ago. T ...
Article - News Staff - Mar 27 2007 - 1:49pm
- Speedy Response Reveals New Information About Gamma Ray Bursts
Gamma ray bursts (GRBs), the brief flashes of light signalling distant, extremely energetic events, have been elusive targets for astronomical observation. (It's something like the fairground game of Whack-a-Mole:by the time you're aware of the ...
Article - Mary Hrovat - Jul 25 2007 - 10:01am
- Impossible Asteroid Siblings
Combining precise observations obtained by ESO's Very Large Telescope with those gathered by a network of smaller telescopes, astronomers have described in unprecedented detail the double asteroid Antiope, which is shown to be a pair of rubble-pile c ...
Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2007 - 1:41pm
- Naval Research Lab Prototypes Long Wavelength Array (LWA) Telescope
Astronomers at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have produced the first images of the sky from a prototype of the Long Wavelength Array (LWA), a revolutionary new radio telescope to be constructed in southwestern New Mexico. The images show emissions f ...
Article - News Staff - Mar 29 2007 - 5:00pm
- Hubble's View Of Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1672
NGC 1672, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is seen almost face on and shows regions of intense star formation. The greatest concentrations of star formation are found in the so-called starburst regions near the ends of the galaxy's strong galact ...
Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2007 - 1:35am
- Ironic Astronomy- Supernova Impostor Goes Supernova
In a galaxy far, far away, a massive star suffered a nasty double whammy. On Oct. 20, 2004, Japanese amateur astronomer Koichi Itagaki saw the star let loose an outburst so bright that it was initially mistaken for a supernova. The star survived, but for ...
Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2007 - 1:23am
- X-ray Satellites Catch Magnetar Hiccups
Astronomers using data from several X-ray satellites have caught a magnetar – the remnant of a massive star with an incredibly strong magnetic field – in a sort of giant cosmic blench. When it comes to eerie astrophysical effects, the neutron stars common ...
Article - News Staff - Apr 7 2007 - 1:22am