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26 July 2010
Gravitational Lensing Caught By Amateur Telescope
Just a few short years ago, even the thought of capturing an astronomy anomaly with what's considered an "amateur telescope" was absolutely unthinkable. Who were we to even try to do what great minds postulated and even greater equipment resolved? I'll tell you who… Bernhard Hubl. Come on inside to meet him and see what [...]
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21 July 2010
First Quasar Gravitational Lens Discovered (w/video)
Gravitation lensing – a phenomenon that falls out of Einstein's theory of general relativity – has been observed numerous times, making for some fantastic images of rings, arcs and crosses composed of massive galaxies light years away. As the light from a background object is bent by gravity around a foreground object, multiple, magnified images [...]
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05 April 2010
Stunning Science Using Nature's Telescope
Einstein started it all, back in 1915. Eddington picked up the ball and ran with it, in 1919. And in the last decade or so astronomers have used a MACHO to OLGE CASTLES … yes, I'm talking about gravitational lensing. Now LABOCA and SABOCA are getting into the act, using Einstein's theory of general relativity to cast a [...]
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21 March 2010
Galaxies in Early Universe Experienced "Growth Spurt"
Looking back in time – and through a gravitational lens – astronomers found evidence that galaxies in the early Universe went through a "growth spurt" of rapid and vigorous star formation. A distant galaxy, known as SMM J2135-0102 is making new stars 250 times faster than the Milky Way. Due to the [...]
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18 March 2010
This is Getting Boring: General Relativity Passes Yet another Big Test!
Published in 1915, Einstein's theory of general relativity (GR) passed its first big test just a few years later, when the predicted gravitational deflection of light passing near the Sun was observed during the 1919 solar eclipse. In 1960, GR passed its first big test in a lab, here on Earth; the Pound-Rebka experiment. And over [...]
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02 March 2010
Using Gravitational Lensing to Measure Age and Size of Universe
Handy little tool, this gravitational lensing! Astronomers have used it to measure the shape of stars, look for exoplanets, and measure dark matter in distant galaxies. Now its being used to measure the age and size of the Universe. Researchers say this new use of gravitation lensing provides a very precise way [...]
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21 February 2010
Dark Matter in Distant Galaxy Groups Mapped for the First Time
Galaxy density in the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) field, with colors representing the redshift of the galaxies, ranging from redshift of 0.2 (blue) to 1 (red). Pink x-ray contours show the extended x-ray emission as observed by XMM-Newton. Dark matter (actually cold, dark – non-baryonic – matter) can be detected only by its gravitational influence. In [...]
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21 July 2009
A Table-Top Test of General Relativity?
Even Albert Einstein might have been impressed. His theory of general relativity, which describes how the gravity of a massive object, such as a star, can curve space and time, has been used to predict small shifts in the orbit of Mercury, gravitational lensing by galaxies and black holes, and the existence of gravitational waves.  [...]
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10 June 2009
First Extra-Galactic Planet May Have Been Detected
Using a technique called Pixel-lensing, a group of astronomers in Italy may have detected a planet orbiting another star. But this planet is unique among the 300-plus exoplanets discovered so far, as it and its parent star are in another galaxy. The Andromeda Galaxy, to be exact. Technically, the star in M31 [...]
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22 April 2009
Oldest and Most Distant Water in the Universe Detected
Astronomers have found the most distant signs of water in the Universe to date. The water vapor is thought to be contained in a maser, a jet ejected from a supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy, named MG J0414+0534. The radiation from the water maser was emitted when the Universe was only [...]
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17 December 2008
Water 'Way Out There
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was water. Astronomers have found tell-tale signatures of water molecules in a galaxy more than 11 billion light years from Earth. Using the giant, 100-meter-diameter radio telescope in Effelsberg, Germany, along with the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, scientists detected [...]
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08 October 2008
'Cosmic Eye' Helps Focus on Distant Galaxy's Formation
Using gravitational lensing, astronomers have been able to see a young star-forming galaxy in the distant universe as it appeared only two billion years after the Big Bang. Appropriately enough, the galaxy used as a zoom lens was the "Cosmic Eye" galaxy, named so because through the effect of gravitational lensing, it looks like [...]
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27 August 2008
Clash of Clusters Separates Dark Matter From Ordinary Matter
A powerful collision of galaxy clusters captured by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory provides evidence for dark matter and insight into its properties. Observations of the cluster known as MACS J0025.4-1222 indicate that a titanic collision has separated dark matter from ordinary matter. The images also provide an independent confirmation of [...]
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21 July 2008
Hubble Survey of Gravitational Lenses Yields Measure of Dark Matter in Distant Galaxies
An international team of astronomers have compiled the largest-ever single collection of "gravitational lens" galaxies, and their survey yielded information on the masses of galaxies, including an inference of the amount of dark matter. Gravitational lensing occurs when two galaxies happen to aligned with one another along our line of sight in the sky. [...]
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