News: September 2009
Hubble strips down Virgo Cluster galaxies
Ram pressure stripping has been caught in the act in images of the Virgo Cluster snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope prior to its servicing mission earlier this year.
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The complete GigaGalaxy Zoom trilogy
The third and final installment of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project has now been released, completing the dive into our Milky Way Galaxy with a stunning view of the Lagoon Nebula.
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Glowing report brightens Arecibo's future
The Arecibo Observatory provides “unmatched precision and accuracy” in detecting asteroids or comets that could hit the Earth, says a report by the National Academy of Sciences that could help secure the observatory’s future.
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MESSENGER heads for third Mercury encounter
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft will make its third and final pass of innermost planet Mercury tonight, on a gravity assist maneuver that will steer it into orbit around the Sun-drenched world in March 2011.
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New impact site for LCROSS water-hunting mission
Officials have shifted the target for next week's smash into the Moon by the LCROSS lunar impactor mission after a new analysis showed another crater has a better chance of yielding results verifying the existence of water at the south pole.
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SMART-1's snap of LCROSS crash scene
The European Space Agency's SMART-1 team has released an image of next week's impact site of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, LCROSS.
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Water ice seen in fresh craters on Mars
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MRO, has revealed frozen water hidden just below the surface of the red planet in fresh impact craters located about half-way between the north pole and the equator.
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Scientists announce evidence of water on Moon
Data from the Indian Chandrayaan-1 Moon mission, supported with similar data collected during Deep Impact and Cassini flybys of the Moon, has provided unambiguous evidence of water locked up in the lunar soil, bringing dreams of a sustainable Moon base one step closer.
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Buried ice holds clues on Mars climate cycles
Three-dimensional radar imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers courtesy of NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter matches climate swing predictions for the last few million years.
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Keck telescopes probe dual dust discs
Using the 10-metre Keck Observatory telescopes, astronomers have probed one of the most compact dust discs ever resolved around another star.
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New ring quirks revealed during Saturn equinox
A slate of new images taken during Saturn's equinox season reveal the finer detail of ruffles, kinks, dust clouds and even impact events occurring within the giant planet's rings.
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Spitzer spots swirling clump of planetary stuff
According to new observations made by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, a star or planet appears to be pushing a clump of planet-forming material around a young star.
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White dwarf's slow spin not just skin-deep
By borrowing a technique used by seismologists to probe Earth's interior, astronomers have profiled for the first time the internal rotation of a white dwarf star, and find that it rotates at the same slow speed as its surface.
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Chandra's portrait of Milky Way centre
Following ESO's photo release of the Milky Way's Galactic Centre yesterday, the Chandra X-ray Observatory presents this remarkable portrait, exposing new levels of complexity and intrigue at the heart of our Galaxy.
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Vivid vista shines light on Galactic Centre
The European Southern Observatory has today released the second of three new breath-taking portraits showing the Milky Way in unprecedented detail.
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Planck takes first look into the past
ESA's mission to study the very early Universe – Planck – has successfully completed its test survey of the sky.
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Should Mars really be black?
New laboratory studies suggest that Mars' red dust is formed by the grinding of surface rocks, and not through rusting by oceans that once flooded the planet's surface.
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LRO hints at water on Moon
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, LRO, has entered its mapping orbit of the Moon and has already found evidence that hints at widespread hydrogen, and water frost at the south pole.
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Troubling binary stars are tipped over
Tipped over stars are to blame for a peculiar double star system in which the stars are revolving around one another four times slower than they should, according to new research published in the 17 September issue of Nature.
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The quiet Sun's silent storms
We shouldn't be misled into thinking that a lack of sunspots means a quiet Sun, say researchers from the USA who have found that our planet was bombarded with high speed streams of solar energy throughout 2008.
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Swift's portrait of Andromeda
Taking time out from its typical agenda of searching for distant cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift satellite has acquired the highest resolution view of the Andromeda galaxy in ultraviolet.
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Rocky exo-world breaks new records
A small planet 500 light years away has been found to be the fastest moving planet known, whizzing around its star once every 20.4 hours. To orbit so quickly the planet, known as CoRoT-7b, must be only 2.5 million kilometres from its sun. It is the first planet to be unambiguously confirmed as a rocky planet.
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A new formula for finding habitable worlds
To ascertain which exoplanets are more likely to support life, scientists from the Open University are assembling a revolutionary new 'habitability index' that is being presented for the first time today at EPSC.
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Stuff of life may have been cooked up on young Earth
Compounds crucial to the evolution of organic molecules, which first existed between 4.5 and 3.8 billion years ago and that paved the way for life to eventually form on Earth, have been recreated in a laboratory for the first time in conditions matching those of the early Earth.
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New views of Solar System's largest moon
In two separate studies, scientists have created the first global geological map of Jupiter's moon Ganymede and offered new insight into the complex electromagnetic interactions between Jupiter, Ganymede and Io.
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More evidence for Venus' watery past
The Venus Express spacecraft has measured concentrations of water vapour in the planet's atmosphere and found proof that the solar wind has stripped away Venus' once plentiful oceans.
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Mars' dried up lakes and carbon dioxide ice
Cracks intersecting into a network of polygonal shapes on the floors of large craters and impact basins on Mars are the result of dessication caused by the evaporation of lakes, according to a new analysis presented today at EPSC.
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Refurbished Hubble gets off to a flying start
NASA scientists today unveiled the first spectacular images captured by the recently repaired Hubble Space Telescope.
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Titan's wet north pole
A more global view of the landscape on Saturn's moon Titan shows the extent of the river channels, lakes, continents and vast plains of dunes that cover its surface.
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Haumea's spot rich with organics?
A dark red spot discovered on dwarf planet Haumea appears to be richer in minerals and organic compounds than the surrounding icy surface.
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Comet Holmes produced mini-comets
The outburst of Comet 17P/Holmes was so violent that it blew huge chunks of the comet's surface clean off, according to a new analysis of images taken in November 2007.
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Saturn's giant lightning storm
The longest lightning storm ever seen has been raging in the atmosphere of Saturn since January 2009, it has been revealed today at the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC).
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ESO unveils interactive 360 degree view of night sky
The first of three images of ESO’s GigaGalaxy Zoom project – a new magnificent 800-million-pixel panorama of the entire sky as seen from ESO’s observing sites in Chile – has just been released online
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Target crater for LCROSS impacts revealed
NASA has selected a final destination for its Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) which will impact the crater Cabeus A on 9 October.
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Asteroids may reveal details of Jupiter's formation
The asteroids Vesta and Ceres may have borne the brunt of Jupiter’s increasing influence in the early Solar System, according to new research being presented today at EPSC.
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Saturn's radiation shield
Newly released results from the European Planetary Science Congress (EPSC) being held in Potsdam, Germany all this week show how Saturn's moon Tethys is protecting the ringed planet from the onslaught of solar storms.
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Giant planet holds comets hostage
Jupiter has been caught ‘kidnapping’ comets when they venture too close, forcing them to become temporary satellites of the great planet before they are slingshot away or spiral into Jupiter.
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Magnetic fields sculpt stellar growth
New research shows that cosmic magnetic fields play a more dominant role in star formation than previously believed.
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Galactic cannibalism on our cosmic doorstep
A new study has found evidence for the Andromeda Galaxy having gobbled up other nearby galaxies, and the Triangulum Galaxy is next on the menu.
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Astronomers uncover celestial Rosetta Stone
Using ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope, astronomers have uncovered the first close-up of a white dwarf star circling a companion star that could explode in a dramatic supernova event in a few million years.
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The hunt for habitable exomoons
While astronomers keenly await the discovery of Earth-like planets around other stars, the possibility of habitable moons should not be ruled out either, say scientists at University College London.
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The Milky Way's not-so-distant cousin
A new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) reveals an edge-on galaxy much like our own Milky Way.
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Milky Way will be 'puffed up', not ripped apart
New computer simulations conducted by Ohio State University astronomers suggest that the Milky Way will meet its fate by being 'puffed up' rather than ripped apart.
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Precision measurements of space curvature
Using the continent-wide Very Long Baseline Array, scientists have made a precise measurement of the curvature of space caused by the Sun's gravity.
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Most distant supermassive black hole discovered
A giant galaxy wrapped around a supermassive black hole seen as it was 12.8 billion years ago is the most distant behemoth ever found.
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Ocean and atmosphere patterns linked to solar cycle
Subtle connections between the solar cycle, the stratosphere and the tropical Pacific Ocean generate regular weather patterns that could help predict the intensity of climate phenomena years in advance.
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