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03 December 2008
Astronomers 'Time Travel' to 16th Century Supernova
On November 11, 1572 Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe and other skywatchers observed what they thought was a new star. A bright object appeared in the constellation Cassiopeia, outshining even Venus, and it stayed there for several months until it faded from view. What Brahe actually saw was a supernova, a rare event where [...]
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02 December 2008
Holiday Glitter With Omega Centauri
A new image of Omega Centauri shows the globular cluster glittering away as one of the finest jewels of the southern hemisphere night sky. It contains millions of stars and is located about 17,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Centaurus, and sparkles at magnitude 3.7, appearing nearly as large as the full [...]
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24 November 2008
Sources of Earth-Bombarding Cosmic Rays May Have Been Located
Last week's announcement of a puzzling and unknown source of high energy cosmic rays bombarding the Earth is now joined by another discovery of two sources of unexpected cosmic rays from nearby regions of space. A Los Alamos National Laboratory cosmic-ray observatory has seen for the first time two distinct hot spots that appear [...]
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23 October 2008
Asteroseismology: Observing Stars Vibrate with CoRoT
Observing a stars brightness pulsate may reveal its internal structure say researchers using the Convection Rotation and Planetary Transits (CoRoT) observatory. The highly sensitive orbital telescope can detect tiny variations in a distant star's brightness, leading astronomers into a new field of stellar seismology called "asteroseismology." Seismology is more commonly used by scientists on Earth [...]
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15 October 2008
Feeding Time at the Stellar Zoo: Infant Stars Generate Lots of Gas
Understanding how stars form is critical to astronomers. If we can gain a better understanding of how intermediate-size infant stars grow, we can begin to answer some of the most perplexing questions hanging over the evolution of our own Solar System. Unfortunately, the nearest star forming regions are about 500 light years away, meaning that [...]
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26 September 2008
Astrophysicist's South Pole Death Remains a Mystery After Eight Years
In May 2000, Australian astrophysicist Dr Rodney David Marks died from acute methanol poisoning whilst stationed at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. He was a 32 year old "brilliant and witty" scientist, whose death shocked his family and friends. The media jumped on this story, citing the tragedy as the "first South Pole murder," [...]
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02 September 2008
New Eye to the Universe Under Construction
The LSST, or the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is a large survey telescope being constructed in northern Chile. When operational in 2015, it will be the widest, fastest, deepest eye of the new digital age, providing timelapse digital imaging across the entire night sky every three days, mapping the structure of our dynamic universe [...]
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11 June 2008
XMM-Newton Discovers Strange-Shaped Supernova Remnant
XMM-Newton has just released this beautiful image of a supernova remnant and its companion neutron star. To be more accurate, it didn't "discover" the object, remnant G350.1-0.3 had previously been mistaken to be a distant galaxy. The X-ray observatory has reclassified the object as a Milky Way binary system with one neutron star and the [...]
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10 June 2008
Arecibo Joins Forces with Global Antennae to Simulate 6,800 Mile Telescope
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has joined forces with telescopes located in North America, South America, Europe and Africa to create the observing power of a radio telescope 6,800 miles (nearly 11,000 kilometres) in diameter. This collaboration is called the Express Production Real-time e-VLBI Service (EXPReS) project, and on May 22nd, the system went [...]
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28 May 2008
Eta Carinae and the "Cosmic Cauldron" in Unprecedented Detail - New Images from the VLT
To celebrate the Very Large Telescope's (VLT) 10th birthday on Tuesday, it was us who received the gifts. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released two magnificent astronomical images of two nebulae, both very different, but spectacular all the same. One is the iconic scene of Eta Carinae (a.k.a. Homunculus, "little man" in Latin, pictured), the [...]
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01 May 2008
What's Up - The Weekend SkyWatcher's Forecast - May 2-4, 2008
Greetings, fellow SkyWatchers! Are you ready for a great dark sky weekend? Then it's time to walk into the galaxy field of dreams as we take a closer look at part of Markarian's Chain. Even smaller telescopes and larger binoculars will be happy with this weekend's globular clusters! Need more [...]
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19 April 2008
Australian Observatory Captures New Nova In Sagittarius
Hold on to your hats… It's happening again. According to AAVSO Special Notice #105 released on April 19, another possible nova event is now occurring in Sagittarius. Through their quick actions, Macedon Ranges Observatory in Central Victoria, Australia was on top the alert and imaging. (...)Read the rest of Australian Observatory Captures New Nova [...]
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15 April 2008
Universe Today Exclusive - Cygnus Nova V2491 Revealed for Readers
Clouds got you down? No chance of seeing V2491 Cyg because of the weather? Are you sleeping when Cygnus is up? One of the most beautiful facets of having an astronomer around is being able to share information with other observatories around the world and put them to work. This time [...]
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10 March 2008
The World's Most Powerful Telescope Sees First Light
First light is a big deal. That's when a new observatory opens up for the first time and gathers light on its detectors. It's even a bigger deal when the world's most powerful telescope sees the night sky for the first time. Astronomers get ready for the Large Binocular Telescope.
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12 February 2008
Cautious Welcome for UK Research Council U-Turn on Gemini Observatory Funding
The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) appear to have given UK astronomers a temporary reprieve over their access to the Gemini Observatories in Chile and Hawaii. As previously reported on the Universe Today, UK astronomers were stunned at the decision to totally pull out from the international collaboration with one of the worlds most advanced telescope [...]
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