General Articles

Galaxies coming of age in cosmic blobs

Artist concept of a galaxy inside of a glowing hydrogen “blob.” Image credit: Nasa/CXC/MWeiss The “coming of age” of galaxies and black holes has been pinpointed, thanks to new data from Nasa’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (Chandra) and other telescopes. This discovery helps resolve the true nature of gigantic blobs of gas observed around very young …

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Found: 62 meteor showers new to science

  The 62 newly proposed meteor showers have names like the Microscopiids and the beta Camelopardalids. “It got a little tedious to give them all new names,” says team leader Peter Brown. Above, a Perseid meteor streaks through auroras above Colorado in 2000 (Image: Jimmy Westlake) 23 September 2009 by Jeff Hecht Every now and …

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First view of our place in the galaxy

19 October 2009 Article from Popular Mechanics website Nasa’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft has made it possible for scientists to construct the first comprehensive sky map of our solar system and its location in the Milky Way galaxy. The new view will change the way researchers view and study the interaction between our galaxy …

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First fruits of gravity probe

  1 October 2009 The European Space Agency’s most sophisticated gravity satellite, the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), has begun mapping Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail. This image is the first gravity gradient map from GOCE data that ESA has released. Launched on 17 March, GOCE has been through three months of …

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Eruption reveals dead star

  Illustration of a magnetar. Magnetars are the most intensely magnetised objects in the Universe. (Nasa/Esa) Paris – An enormous eruption has found its way to Earth after travelling for many thousands of years across space. Studying this blast with Esa’s XMM-Newton and Integral space observatories, astronomers have discovered a dead star belonging to a …

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