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26 August 2008
GLAST is Now Fermi
With "first light" successfully observed by the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope, or GLAST, as it has been called until now, NASA has christened the space observatory with its new official name: The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope. Named for Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, the telescope will delve into the mysteries of the [...]
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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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09 June 2008
Can Light be "Squeezed" to Improve Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detectors?
The search is on to detect the first evidence of gravitational waves travelling around the cosmos. How can we do this? The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) uses a system of laser beams fired over a distance of 4 km (2.5 miles) and reflected back and forth by a system of mirrors. Should a gravitational [...]
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06 June 2008
Planetary Potential from Protoplanetary Disks
How planets form is one of the major questions in astronomy. Only recently have we been able to study the disks of dust and gas surrounding other stars in an effort to understand the process of how planets coalesce and form from these "protoplanetary" materials. But this is a difficult task at best, [...]
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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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20 May 2008
World's Strangest Telescope - The IceCube
Since the 1950s and the beginning of the "space race" scientists have wanted to practice astronomy and particle physics using high-energy neutrinos. So what's stopping them? The challenge of building the kilometer-sized observatory they predict is needed to do the science. Enter IceCube, a revolutionary new design in neutrino detecting telescopes. [...]
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19 May 2008
Podcast: Adaptive Optics
Since the dawn of humanity, astronomers have wished to destroy the atmosphere. Oh sure, it's what we breathe and all, but that stupid atmosphere is always getting in the way. Since destroying the atmosphere is out of the question, astronomers have figured out how to work with it. To distort the mirror of the telescope [...]
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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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23 April 2008
Podcast: Detectors
Our senses can only detect a fraction of the phenomena happening in the Universe. That's why scientists and engineers develop detectors, to let us see radiation and particles that we could never detect with our eyes and ears. This week we'll go through them all, so you can understand how we see what we can't [...]
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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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12 April 2008
Mysterious Omega Centauri Dazzling in Infrared: New Spitzer Observations
By combining ground-based optical observations with space-borne infrared images from Spitzer, an incredible new view of mysterious Omega Centauri has been revealed. Astronomers have had a hard time identifying what type of galaxy Omega Centauri actually is, so any new information on the cluster of millions of stars is needed. By combining observations in different [...]
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01 April 2008
SuperWASP are Super Planet-Finding Observatories
The United Kingdom’s Wide Area Search for Planets, known as SuperWASP consists of two 8-camera robotic observatories that cover both hemispheres of the sky. In the past 6 months an international team of astronomers have used these unique observatories to discover 10 new extra-solar planets, making SuperWASP the most successful planet-hunting observatory in the world. [...]
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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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