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 …
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 …
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 …
Video: Saturn moon eclipses neighbour The Cassini probe has caught its first glimpse of one Saturn moon eclipsing another, as the moon Enceladus passed in front of its neighbour Mimas. Most of Saturn’s moons orbit in the same plane as its rings, along the planet’s equator. This arrangement creates frequent alignments, but eclipses are rare …
Radio telescopes detect a large cloud of hydrogen gas (contour lines) where no stars can be found (Image: R Minchin/Arecibo Observatory/Cardiff U/Isaac Newton Telescope/WSRT) Neutral hydrogen gas streams between NGC 4254 (top left) and the dark galaxy VIRGOH121 (centre right) in this radio image. The new study suggests VIRGOHI21's gravity is responsible for NGC …
