News: January 2009
Methane rain fills
Titan’s lakes
Changes in the appearance of hydrocarbon lakes and the presence of extensive cloud systems provide strong evidence for rainfall and changing seasons on Saturn’s largest moon Titan.
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Black hole outflows from Centaurus A revealed
Using the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment’s submillimetre wavelength capabilities, new insight has been gained into the jets and lobes flowing from Centaurus A’s central black hole.
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Sizzling weather report from an eccentric exoplanet
By observing an exoplanet’s rapid rise in temperature as it approached its parent star, astronomers were able to map its atmospheric properties to generate realistic images of what it would look like if you were there.
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Wall of gas divides
cosmic metropolis
A new study from the Chandra X-ray Observatory unveils the star-forming factory NGC 604 as a divided neighbourhood.
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Milky Way’s black hole twin discovered in nearby galaxy
Exploiting the Very Large Telescope’s acute infrared capabilities, astronomers have uncovered intense star-forming regions and a supermassive black hole in nearby galaxy NGC 253.
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C1XS takes first taste of lunar X-rays
The UK-built C1XS instrument flying aboard the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter has successfully detected its first X-ray signature from the Moon.
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Supermassive black holes not guilty of shutting down star formation
According to a team lead by Yale University astronomers, galaxies cease star formation long before their supermassive black holes have the power to do the job themselves.
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Astronomers discover super-Neptune
Astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have discovered a planet 4.7 times the size of Earth and 25 times more massive, earning it the nickname of a “super-Neptune”.
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Special Report:
Eminent speakers gather for IYA kick-off
The International Year of Astronomy officially kicked off with a grand opening in Paris last week. Astronomy Now’s Keith Cooper and Emily Baldwin joined representatives from over 130 countries to mark the first 400 years of modern Astronomy.
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Moon once had internal dynamo
New analysis of an Apollo sample rock suggests that the Moon once had a liquid core with a dynamo that produced a strong magnetic field, adding fuel to a debate that has lasted 30 years.
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Dusty stars point to Universe’s early years
Striking new evidence suggests that large volumes of cosmic dust was forged by gradually dying carbon stars, contradicting theories that it forms solely in massive stellar explosions.
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IBEX mapping Solar System's unseen boundary
NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission has begun building the first maps of the edge of our Solar System, something that has never been done until now.
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Spin seen for soft gamma-ray repeater
For the first time ever, the spin rate of an elusive soft gamma-ray repeater has been detected, which could allow scientists to infer more of its properties. The reason that this is so important is because only five of these objects are currently known; four in the Milky Way, and one in the Large Magellanic Cloud, making for an incredibly small sample to study.
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Is Mars methane the 'breath of life'?
Localised plumes of methane detected on Mars could be coming from life forms under the planet’s surface according to NASA and academic scientists. The findings were revealed in a live webcast yesterday at 19:00 GMT. Though there could be other possible, non-biological processes responsible for the methane, it is the strongest clue to date that the red planet may not be a dead world.
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Radiation pressure mystery solved for massive stars
Stars larger than 100 solar masses shouldn’t exist, as radiation pressure should prevent any more infalling material. And yet they do. A study published this week in Science explains why.
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Mars rocks are on the move
Contrary to a previous explanation that suggested high speed winds were responsible for rolling rocks around the red planet, a new model shows that a much more ordered system transports rocks upwind.
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Keeping our skies safe
The Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), which has discovered around 70 percent of all Near Earth Objects (NEOs) in the past three years, has been awarded a substantial NASA grant to continue its search through to 2012.
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Cassiopeia A, the movie
Using eight year’s worth of data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have released a movie tracking changes in the dynamic supernova remnant Cassiopeia A.
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Stars form perilously close to Milky Way’s black hole
Two stars have been located just a few light years from the galactic centre, confirming that stars can form perilously close to a black hole.
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Tuning in to the
cosmic radio
According to scientists presenting their work at the American Astronomical Society meeting this week, cosmic radio noise booms six times louder than expected, potentially drowning out the sounds of the early Universe.
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Hubble catches
ballistic stars
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured 14 young, runaway stars slicing through regions of dense interstellar gas, creating brilliant bow shocks and leaving glowing tendrils in their wake.
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Black holes lead
galaxy growth
New research may have solved the cosmic chicken-and-egg problem of which formed first in the early Universe: galaxies, or the supermassive black holes seen at their cores.
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First detection of gas molecules in GRB galaxy
Using a combination of space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have, for the first time, identified molecular gas in the host galaxy of gamma-ray burst 080607.
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Brown dwarfs don't hang out with stars
According to the results of a Hubble Space Telescope survey, brown dwarfs and normal stars don’t like to hang out together.
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Active galaxies vary across the Universe
In an on-going X-ray survey, NASA’s Swift spacecraft is revealing that nearby active galaxies are more alive than those located halfway across the Universe.
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Fermi unveils a dozen
new pulsars
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered 12 new gamma-ray-only pulsars and has detected gamma-ray pulses from 18 others, adding vital new information to our understanding of how these stellar powerhouses operate.
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Milky Way a swifter spinner and more massive
New high precision measurements of the Milky Way suggest that our home Galaxy is spinning a dizzy 100,000 miles per hour faster than previously believed.
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Baby Jupiters gain
weight fast
According to a new study of planet formation around young stars, gas giants have to form in under five million years, or they probably won’t form at all.
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Dead stars tell story of planet birth
Astronomers have turned to an unexpected place to study the evolution of planets: dead stars.
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The Universe is yours
to discover
The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) promises to make the Universe yours to discover, in a year that celebrates the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first astronomical observation of the Moon through a telescope and the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landings.
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Mars rovers celebrate fifth year of three month mission
NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers celebrate their fifth year exploring the Red Planet this month, in a mission that was only expected to last three months.
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