News: August 2011
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Unique galaxy tells tantalizing tale
A spiral galaxy with a unique combination of characteristics, including powerful jets, is giving astronomers insight into the growth of galaxies early in the Universe.
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First simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy
A team’s efforts to create a computer simulation of a Milky Way-like galaxy is reported as successful, and helps to solve a recurring problem of galaxy formation.
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Class act supernova caught on telescope
Berkeley astronomers have caught the rare event of a type Ia supernova just hours after its eruption, residing a short 21 million light years away from Earth in the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) of Ursa Major, making it the closest type Ia supernova seen in decades.
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Observing the Pinwheel's supernova
Supernova PTF11kly has real potential to become bright enough to be visible in large binoculars. Amateur astronomers are strongly urged to make as many observations as possible while it is ‘on the rise’, as such data is so valuable to on-going research into these titanic explosions.
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WISE spots coolest stars in the Universe
Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has uncovered what has been hailed as the coolest class of stars to be found, with temperatures dipping as low as that of the human body.
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Diamond "planet" was once a star
A small planet-sized object made of solid diamond has been found orbiting a pulsar 4,000 light years away in the constellation of Serpens.
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Black hole signals stellar feast
Radiation streaming from a source known as Swift J1644+57 is thought to be the result of a star being consumed by a once-dormant black hole.
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White dwarf planet not so Snow White
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have uncovered ice and possibly a thin atmospheric layer of methane belonging to the dwarf planet 2007 OR10, also nicknamed Snow White.
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VLT stares into the eyes of Virgo
The peculiar pair of galaxies nicknamed The Eyes in the constellation of Virgo have been captured by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) ground-based Very Large Telescope (VLT). It is the first image to be produced by ESO’s Cosmic Gems outreach programme.
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Colliding solar systems spell disaster for habitable planets
Computer simulations have revealed the reason why some exoplanets are inclined at large angles and why this might lead to habitable planets being evicted from planetary systems.
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Could Earth’s ring of antimatter power spacecraft?
A belt of antimatter has been discovered circling the Earth, which in future could be used to fuel voyages that race at breakneck speeds to other planets in the Solar System.
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The Moon gets a face-lift
New analysis of lunar rocks suggests that Earth's Moon could be around 200 million years younger than previously thought.
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Giant space blob glows from within
A team of astronomers using ESO's (European Southern Observatory) Very Large Telescope (VLT) have found that a rare and vast glowing cloud of gas known as a Lyman-alpha blob is being powered by light emitted from galaxies that are embedded within it.
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Exoplanet blacker than coal
A Jupiter-sized planet discovered in 2006 by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) and observed again by the Kepler spacecraft has a curious property: it reflects less than one percent of the sunlight falling on it, making it blacker than coal or any other planet or moon in the Solar System.
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Red galaxies fire up galaxy evolution theory
Astronomers from the University of Tokyo and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) have uncovered star-forming galaxies that appear paradoxically red in a galaxy cluster situated some four billion light years away.
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Opportunity rover begins exploring huge crater
NASA's Opportunity rover has arrived at Endeavour crater, a sweeping impact site fraught with clay minerals that could signal a wetter, more habitable environment existed on ancient Mars, the space agency announced Wednesday.
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Meteorites could be life’s messengers
Chemicals that existed in the early Solar System, which could have been an important source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth, have been found locked up within meteorites.
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Keep an eye on the sky for Perseids!
The Perseid meteor shower peaks on 12-13 August but this year will be hampered by a full moon. How many will you spot?
NIGHT SKY GUIDE
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Liquid water on Mars might taste salty
Fingers of dark material running down steep slopes in the warmest regions of Mars could be the result of salty water flows, say scientists interpreting repeat observations snapped by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's (MRO) powerful HiRISE camera.
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Atlas 5 rocket launches Jupiter-bound probe
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket has lifted off carrying NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft from Cape Canaveral's Complex 41. Technical issues delayed the launch until 12:25 p.m. EDT (1625 GMT).
SPACEFLIGHT NOW MISSION STATUS CENTER
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Moon's mountains made from giant 'splat'
The rugged highlands of the lunar farside may be the remains of a smaller companion moon that sunk into its surface, according to new computer simulations conducted by planetary scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Amateur astronomers strike it asteroid-rich
A new project with the Faulkes Telescope Project, part of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT), is allowing amateur astronomers and schoolchildren to team up to find new asteroids and comets.
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Juno seeks new insights into origins of planet Jupiter
NASA's solar-powered Juno spacecraft, the centerpiece of a $1.1 billion mission to Jupiter, has been mounted atop an Atlas 5 rocket, setting the stage for launch 5 August on a five-year voyage to the Solar System's largest planet.
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Orion breathes oxygen
ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has made the first confirmed detection of oxygen molecules in space, in the star-forming factory of the Orion Nebula.
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VISTA finds 96 star clusters
Using data from the VISTA infrared survey telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, an international team of astronomers has discovered 96 new open star clusters hidden by the dust in the Milky Way.
ESO IMAGE RELEASE
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Asteroid shares Earth's orbit
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) has uncovered Earth's first Trojan asteroid – a 300-metre wide rocky inhabitant orbiting the Sun in loops around the plane of Earth's orbit.
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NASA unveils spectacular photos of cratered asteroid
Four years after launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA's ion-drive Dawn spacecraft is finally in orbit around the asteroid Vesta, studying the second largest body in the rubble-strewn belt between Mars and Jupiter in unprecedented detail.
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Wave power key to Sun's hot corona
New results from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), published in the journal Nature, may have solved the mystery of how the Sun's outer atmosphere can be more than twenty times hotter than its surface, and could lead to a better understanding of the intense solar wind and its impact on Earth.
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Hot gas heads for black hole
The Chandra X-Ray Observatory has, for the first time at X-ray wavelengths, clearly imaged hot gas being drawn towards a galaxy’s central black hole.
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