Space Station Threshold

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Cepheid variable stars have been used for years as a way to determine distance to other galaxies. The correlation between their period of variability and absolute luminosity provides a cosmic yardstick to measure distances out to a few tens of millions of light-years. Additionally, Cepheids closer to home are used as tools to [...]

While the Anglo-Australian Telescope is far from being the world's largest, or even located in the world's best observing site, it's still the world's most productive in terms of astronomy research. According to recently released productivity ratings, the number of scientific papers resulting from observations made with the ...

Back in April, UT published an article about using a device called a 'laser comb' to search for Earth-like planets. But astronomers also hope to use the device to search for dark energy in an ambitious project that would measure the velocities of distant galaxies and quasars over a 20-year period. This would let [...]

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 [...]

In the age of global light pollution, one thing both amateur and professional astronomers have in common is the need for clear, dark skies. While almost all of us are aware of the impact of light pollution when it comes to pure observing, the "light factor" plays a far more serious role when it [...]

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 [...]

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 ...