Astronomy Now Online

Catching a falling star
July 31:  While observing a supernova in a distant galaxy with the Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory (Chile), astronomers were incredibly lucky to obtain serendipitously a high quality spectrum of a very large meteor in the terrestrial atmosphere.
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Titan's purple covering points to a fuzzy past
July 30:  Encircled in purple stratospheric haze, Saturn's largest moon, Titan, appears as a softly glowing sphere in this colourized image taken on July 3rd, one day after Cassini's first flyby of that moon. Titan has a dense atmosphere composed primarily of nitrogen with a few percent methane. The atmosphere can undergo photochemical processes to form hazes.
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Neutrinos linked to 'dark energy'
July 30:  Two of the biggest physics breakthroughs during the last decade are the discovery that wispy subatomic particles called neutrinos actually have a small amount of mass and the detection that the expansion of the universe is actually picking up speed.
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NASA looks to new astronomy mission ideas
July 29:  NASA has selected nine studies to investigate new ideas for future mission concepts within its Astronomical Search for Origins Program. Among the new missions are some that will survey one billion stars within our own galaxy, measure the distribution of galaxies in the distant universe, study dust and gas between galaxies, study organic compounds in space and investigate their role in planetary system formation and create an optical-ultraviolet telescope to replace the Hubble Space Telescope.
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Hazy all over Titan
July 28:  Following its first flyby of Titan, Cassini gazed back at the smog-enshrouded moon's receding crescent. This natural colour view was seen by the spacecraft about one day after closest approach. The slight bluish glow of Titan's haze is visible along the limb.
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Mysterious plasma jets on the Sun explained
July 28:  Solar physicists from Lockheed Martin and the Solar Physics and upper-Atmosphere Research Group at the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Sheffield, have used computer modelling and some of the highest resolution images ever taken of the solar atmosphere to explain the cause of supersonic jets that continuously shoot through the low atmosphere of the Sun.
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Stellar pair shot out from supernova birthplace
July 28:  Astronomers studying data from the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array and other telescopes have concluded that a binary pair of stars forming an energetic microquasar was blasted out of the cluster in which it was born by a supernova explosion some 1.7 million years ago. This is the first time that a fast-moving stellar pair has been tracked back to a specific star cluster.
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Cassini's rear-view image of Saturn's moon Titan
July 27:  A day after entering orbit around Saturn, Cassini sped silently past Titan, imaging the moon's south polar region. This natural colour image represents Cassini's view only about two hours after closest approach to the moon.
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Odd-looking moon Mimas photographed by Cassini
July 26:  Soon after orbital insertion, Cassini returned its best look yet at heavily cratered Mimas. The enormous crater at the top of this image, named Herschel, is about 80 miles wide and 6 miles deep.
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Gas between galaxies helps case for dark energy
July 24:  Using observations of 3,000 quasars discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, scientists have made the most precise measurement to date of the cosmic clustering of diffuse hydrogen gas. These quasars — 100 times more than have been used in such analyses in the past — are at distances of eight to ten billion light years, making them among the most distant objects known.
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A day in the lives of galaxies
July 23:  Like a photographer clicking random snapshots of a crowd of people, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has taken a view of an eclectic mix of galaxies. In taking this picture, Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys was not looking at any particular target. The camera was taking a picture of a typical patch of sky, while Hubble's infrared camera was viewing a target in an adjacent galaxy-rich region.
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Cassini sees the moon Tethys: The Sea Goddess
July 23:  Like a first quarter Moon, cratered Tethys hangs before the Cassini spacecraft in this narrow angle camera view. Voyager images showed a large fracture on Tethys about 470 miles long. Cassini will investigate this and other features on Tethys during two planned flybys beginning next year.
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Stunning true-colour picture of Saturn's rings
July 22:  With shimmering pinks, hues of gray and a hint of brown, a newly released image of Saturn's rings resembles a fresco where nature is the painter. The Cassini spacecraft captured this exquisite natural colour view a few days before entering orbit around Saturn.
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Newborn star provides info on solar system's origin
July 22:  A new study has caught a newborn star similar to the Sun in a fiery outburst. X-ray observations of the flare-up, which are the first of their kind, are providing important new information about the early evolution of the Sun and the process of planet formation.
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Doughnut-shaped cloud has 'black hole' filling
July 20:  An international team of scientists has found more evidence that massive black holes are surrounded by a doughnut-shaped gas cloud which, depending on our line of sight, blocks the view of the black hole in the centre.
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New martian meteorite found in Antarctica
July 20:  While rovers and orbiting spacecraft scour Mars searching for clues to its past, researchers have uncovered another piece of the red planet in the most inhospitable place on Earth — Antarctica.
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Crescent Rhea captured by Cassini
July 20:  As the first artificial satellite in the Saturn system, Cassini returned images of its native siblings following a successful insertion into orbit, including this unmagnified view of Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon.
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Cassini shows the dark side of Saturn's moon Dione
July 19:  The icy, cratered surface of Saturn's moon Dione shows more than just its sunlit side in these two processed versions of the same image from the Cassini spacecraft.
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Spitzer pinpoints elusive but violent starbursts
July 19:  A major breakthrough in pinpointing some of the most primordial and violently star forming galaxies in the universe has been made by a joint collaboration of U.K. and U.S. astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope to resolve ancient galaxies initially detected by a ground-based observatory.
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Satellite sees 'sprites' in the upper atmosphere
July 18:  Photos of red sprites, blue jets, elves and sprite halos are now flowing into the University of California, Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory from the first satellite instrument devoted to the study of these puzzling high-altitude lightning flashes.
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Astronomers measure mass of a single star
July 17:  A faint star nearly 2,000 light-years away now has something in common with our Sun that no other single star has. Astronomers have directly measured the mass of that star.
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Cassini exposes Saturn's two-faced moon Iapetus
July 15:  The moon with the split personality, Iapetus, presents a perplexing appearance in the latest images snapped by the Cassini spacecraft. One hemisphere of the moon is very dark, while the other is very bright. Scientists do not yet know the origin of the dark material or whether or not it is representative of the interior of Iapetus.
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ESA considers plan to move an asteroid
July 14:  On 9th July 2004, the Near-Earth Object Mission Advisory Panel recommended that the European Space Agency place a high priority on developing a mission to actually move an asteroid. The conclusion was based on the panel's consideration of six near-Earth object mission studies submitted to the Agency in February 2003.
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Panel says keep options open for Hubble repair
July 13: In an interim report, a National Academy of Sciences panel on July 13th recommended that NASA leave open the option of launching a shuttle mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope while engineers assess the viability of a complex robotic servicing flight.
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South pole on Saturn
July 12: Details observed in Saturn's south polar region by Cassini demonstrate that this area is far from featureless. Lighter coloured clouds dot the entire region, which is dominated by a central, sharply-defined circular feature.
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Texas observatory finds its first extrasolar planet
July 10: McDonald Observatory astronomers have exploited the Hobby-Eberly Telescope's (HET's) capabilities to rapidly find and confirm, with great precision, the giant telescope's first planet outside our solar system.
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How to fail at being a star
July 9: Scientists have announced the discovery of a unique pair of newborn brown dwarfs in orbit around each other. Brown dwarfs are a relatively new class of objects discovered in the mid-1990s that are too small to ignite hydrogen fusion and shine as stars, yet too big to be considered planets.
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Space probes track blast wave through solar system
July 8: A fleet of spacecraft dispersed throughout the solar system gave the best picture to date of the effects of blast waves from solar storms as they propagate through the solar system.
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Ultraviolet pictures hint at origin of Saturn's rings
July 7: The best view ever of Saturn's rings in the ultraviolet indicates there is more ice toward the outer part of the rings, hinting at ring origin and evolution, say two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers involved in the Cassini mission.
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Glimpse at early universe reveals surprise
July 7: A rare glimpse back in time into the universe's early evolution has revealed something startling: mature, fully formed galaxies where scientists expected to discover little more than infants.
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Chandra looks over a cosmic four-leaf clover
July 6: A careful analysis of observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of a rare quadruple quasar has uncovered evidence that possibly a single star in a foreground galaxy magnified X-rays coming from the quasar. This discovery gives astronomers a new and extremely precise probe of the gas flow around the supermassive black hole that powers the quasar.
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Mapping the Galaxy, and watching our backyard
July 5: One of ESA's most ambitious current projects has the aim of compiling the most precise map of one thousand million stars in our Galaxy. Gaia, a spacecraft which will carry two of the most sensitive cameras ever made, is due to be launched in 2010.
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Is tranquil environment around Earth unusual?
July 5: Astronomers studying the Tau Ceti system have discovered that it contains ten times as much material in the form of asteroids and comets as our own solar system. Their discovery suggests that even though Tau Ceti is the nearest Sun-like star, any planets that may orbit it would not support life as we know it due to the inevitable large number of devastating collisions.
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NASA creates first 3-D view of solar eruptions
July 4: NASA-funded scientists have created the first three-dimensional view of massive solar eruptions called Coronal Mass Ejections. The result is critical for a complete understanding of CMEs, which, when directed at Earth, may disrupt radio communications, satellites and power systems.
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Cassini close ups of Titan thrill, mystify scientists
July 3: New pictures of Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan, taken by cameras aboard the Cassini probe, show strange looking surface features and a deck of methane clouds the size of Arizona. But so far, the instruments have not detected reflections from the surfaces of lakes or small seas of liquid hydrocarbons many scientists believe must form in the ultra-cold environment.
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Cassini finds puzzles in Saturn's ring ingredients
July 2: Just two days after the Cassini spacecraft entered Saturn orbit, preliminary science results are already beginning to show a complex and fascinating planetary system. One early result intriguing scientists concerns Saturn's Cassini Division, the large gap between the A and B rings.
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Reading tale of ions in Saturn's magnetosphere
July 2: The Cassini spacecraft has barely begun its four-year tour around Saturn, but already a University of Maryland sensor is beginning to reveal new data about the immense magnetosphere of the ringed planet.
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Hubble studies generations of star formation
July 1: The Hubble Space Telescope captures the iridescent tapestry of star birth in a neighbouring galaxy in this panoramic view of glowing gas, dark dust clouds, and young, hot stars.
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Scientists marvel at photos
July 1: Making gravity visible, close-up images of Saturn's rings shot by NASA's newly arrived Cassini probe revealed an intricate, never-before-seen tapestry of icy particles herded into spiralling density waves by the effects of nearby moons.
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Welcome to Saturn!
July 1: NASA's $3.3 billion Cassini probe completed a seven-year, 2.2-billion mile voyage on the night of June 30th/July 1st, firing its main engine for a nerve-wracking 96 minutes to successfully brake into orbit around the ringed planet Saturn.
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