Small, Ground-Based Telescope Images Three Exoplanets

This image shows the light from three planets orbiting a star 120 light-years away. The planets' star, called HR8799, is located at the spot marked with an 'X.' (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Palomar Observatory)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Apr. 14, 2010) — Astronomers have snapped a picture of three planets orbiting a star beyond our own using a modest-sized telescope on the ground. The surprising feat was accomplished by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using a small portion of the Palomar Observatory's Hale Telescope, north of San Diego.

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New LOFAR Telescope Network Probes Universe's Low-Frequency Radiation To Look For Oldest Regions And Alien Civilizations

LOFAR's View of The Super Massive Black Hole In The 3C61.1 Galaxy via Alpha Galileo

From The Telegraph:

Until recently, radio astronomers have concentrated almost exclusively on the high-energy radiation streaming in towards Earth from exotic stellar bodies like pulsars, quasars, and super-massive black holes. But now, a new European observatory called the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) has begun releasing data on the low-energy radiation that permeates the Universe.

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'Super-Supernova' Challenges Astronomers

The first images of supernova SN2007if - the faint host galaxy could not be made out at the time the supernova was discovered. Credit: NBNL

From Cosmos:

SYDNEY: A star that exceeded its known upper mass limit before turning supernova could change the way scientists measure the expansion of the universe and study dark energy, scientists said.

The researchers, led by experts from Yale University, measured the mass of a supernova thought to belong to a unique subclass, type Ia, and found that it significantly exceeded the upper limit, known as the Chandrasekhar limit - which is 1.4 times the mass of our Sun.

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Galaxy Compared To Footballer Peter Crouch

Distant galaxy SMM J2135-0102 went through a massive 'growth spurt' Photo: ESO/PA

From The Telegraph:

A newly-discovered galaxy which went through a massive "growth spurt" has been dubbed the astronomical equivalent of 6ft 7in footballer Peter Crouch by scientists.

Researchers found that the galaxy created stars up to 100 times faster than the Milky Way does today.

Scientists could look back to how the galaxy appeared 10 billion years ago – three billion years after the Big Bang – due to the length of time its light took to reach Earth.

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Bully Galaxy Rules The Neighborhood

This image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope highlights the large and bright elliptical galaxy called ESO 306-17 in the southern sky. In this image, it appears that ESO 306-17 is surrounded by other galaxies but the bright galaxies at bottom left are thought to be in the foreground, not at the same distance in the sky. In reality, ESO 306-17 lies fairly abandoned in an enormous sea of dark matter and hot gas. (Credit: NASA, ESA and Michael West (ESO))

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 21, 2010) — Located half a billion light-years from Earth, ESO 306-17, is a large, bright elliptical galaxy in the southern sky of a type known as a fossil group. Astronomers use this term to emphasize the isolated nature of these galaxies. However, are they like fossils -- the last remnants of a once active community -- or is it more sinister than that? Did ESO 306-17 gobble up its next-door neighbors?

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Planck Spies Massive Dust Clouds

Planck can see really cold dust sweeping through our galaxy

From The BBC:

Europe's Planck observatory has given another brief glimpse of its work.

The space telescope's main goal is to map the "oldest light" in the Universe, but this data is being kept under wraps until the surveying is complete.

Instead, Planck scientists have released a snapshot of the colossal swathes of cold dust that spread through the Milky Way galaxy.

Such imagery will be very useful to astronomers seeking to understand star formation.

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Hurtling Star On A Path To Clip Solar System

Heading our way (Image: ESO)

From New Scientist:

A star is hurtling towards us. It will almost certainly clip the outskirts of the solar system and send comets towards Earth – though not for a while.

Vadim Bobylev of the Pulkovo Observatory in St Petersburg, Russia, modelled the paths of neighbouring stars using data from the European Space Agency's Hipparcos satellite and from ground-based measurements of the speeds of stars.

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Super Supernova: White Dwarf Star System Exceeds Mass Limit

Cosmologists use Type Ia supernovae, like the one visible in the lower left corner of this galaxy, to explore the past and future expansion of the universe and the nature of dark energy. (Credit: High-Z Supernova Search Team, HST, NASA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 16, 2010) — An international team led by Yale University has, for the first time, measured the mass of a type of supernova thought to belong to a unique subclass and confirmed that it surpasses what was believed to be an upper mass limit. Their findings, which appear online and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal, could affect the way cosmologists measure the expansion of the universe.

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Search On For Death Star That Throws Out Deadly Comets

This diagram shows a brown dwarf in relation to Earth, Jupiter, a low-mass star and the sun.
Photo: NASA

From The Telegraph:

Nasa scientists are searching for an invisible 'Death Star' that circles the Sun, which catapults potentially catastrophic comets at the Earth.

The star, also known as Nemesis, is five times the size of Jupiter and could be to blame for the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

The bombardment of icy missiles is being blamed by some scientists for mass extinctions of life that they say happen every 26 million years.

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Orange Dwarf Confirmed To Be On Collision Course With Earth

Gliese 710 Hi there, neighbor! NASA

From Popular Science:

Our solar system's 'hood may get a bit rougher sometime during the next 1.5 million years. An astronomer has given an 86 percent chance for a neighboring star to smash into the frozen Oort Cloud surrounding the outskirts of the solar system, and may scatter some comets toward Earth, Technology Review reports.

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Scientists Discover 'Catastrophic Event' Behind The Halt Of Star Birth in Early Galaxy Formation

Artist’s representation showing outflow from a supermassive black hole inside the middle of a galaxy. (Credit: NASA/CXC/M. Weiss)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 10, 2010) — Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe.

The researchers, led by Durham University's Department of Physics, observed the massive galaxy as it would have appeared just three billion years after the Big Bang when the Universe was a quarter of its present age.

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Most Extreme White Dwarf Binary System Found With Orbit Of Just Five Minutes

Graphic of HM Cancri. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Warwick)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 9, 2010) — An international team of astronomers has shown that the two stars in the binary HM Cancri definitely revolve around each other in a mere 5.4 minutes. This makes HM Cancri the binary star with by far the shortest known orbital period. It is also the smallest known binary. The binary system is no larger than 8 times the diameter of the Earth which is the equivalent of no more than a quarter of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

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First of Missing Primitive Stars Found

The newly discovered red giant star S1020549 dominates this artist's conception. The primitive star contains 6,000 times less heavy elements than our Sun, indicating that it formed very early in the Universe's history. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star's presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks. (Credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Mar. 4, 2010) — Astronomers have discovered a relic from the early universe -- a star that may have been among the second generation of stars to form after the Big Bang. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 290,000 light-years away, the star has a remarkably similar chemical make-up to the Milky Way's oldest stars. Its presence supports the theory that our galaxy underwent a "cannibal" phase, growing to its current size by swallowing dwarf galaxies and other galactic building blocks.

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New 'Alien Invader' Star Clusters Found in Milky Way

As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

From Science Daily:

ScienceDaily (Feb. 26, 2010) — As many as one quarter of the star clusters in our Milky Way -- many more than previously thought -- are invaders from other galaxies, according to a new study. The report also suggests there may be as many as six dwarf galaxies yet to be discovered within the Milky Way rather than the two that were previously confirmed.

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Torn Apart By Its Own Tides, Massive Planet Is On A 'Death March'

Illustration of WASP-12b in orbit about its host star. (Credit: ESA/C Carreau)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 25, 2010) — An international group of astrophysicists has determined that a massive planet outside our Solar System is being distorted and destroyed by its host star -- a finding that helps explain the unexpectedly large size of the planet, WASP-12b.

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Scientists Shed Light On Supernova Origins

Type Ia supernovae are thought to result when a white dwarf star in a binary system accumulates enough matter from its larger companion. When the white dwarf reaches the critical Chandrasekhar mass, about 1.4 times the mass of our Sun, high internal density and temperature ignite a thermonuclear explosion. Because the masses of Type Ia supernovae are similar, their brightnesses are similar. Berkeley Lab

From The L.A. Times:

The so-called Type 1a supernovae are key to measuring celestial distances. Astronomers find evidence that they're formed by the collision of two white dwarfs.

German astronomers using a U.S. telescope have provided scientists with at least a partial answer to a vexing question: What is the origin of the so-called Type 1a supernovae, which are widely used as celestial mileage markers?

Type 1a supernovae are of special significance to astronomers because all are believed to have essentially the same intrinsic brightness, and because they can be observed from great distances. Thus, by comparing the brightness of any one of them to what it is expected to be, researchers can estimate its distance from Earth and thereby judge the distance of objects near it.

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Did 'Dark Stars' Spawn Supermassive Black Holes?

A massive dark star voraciously eating matter and dark matter until it is well over 100,000 times the mass of the sun (NASA/Ian O'Neill).

From Discover Magazine:

Approximately 200 million years after the Big Bang, the universe was a very different place.

For starters, there was no starlight as there were no stars. This period was known descriptively as the "Dark Ages." As there were no stars, only clouds of the most basic elements persisted, fogging up the cosmos.

Although it's believed the first stars (known as "Population III stars") were sparked when hydrogen and helium gases cooled enough to clump together, collapsing under gravity and initiating nuclear fusion in the star cores (thus generating heavier elements), there's another possibility.

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Primordial Giant: The Star That Time Forgot

Messages from a long-lost universe (Image: Tim Gravestock)

From New Scientist:

At first, there didn't seem anything earth-shattering about the tiny point of light that pricked the southern Californian sky on a mild night in early April 2007. Only the robotic eyes of the Nearby Supernova Factory, a project designed to spy out distant stellar explosions, spotted it from the Palomar Observatory, high in the hills between Los Angeles and San Diego.

The project's computers automatically forwarded the images to a data server to await analysis. The same routine kicks in scores of times each year when a far-off star in its death throes explodes onto the night sky, before fading back to obscurity once more.

But this one did not fade away. It got brighter. And brighter. That's when human eyes became alert.

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Astronomers Back Chile To Host World's Biggest Telescope

A view of a telescope, operated by the European Southern Observatory, in Chile. Photo: Reuters/VICTOR RUIZ CABALLERO

From The Telegraph:

For astronomers, it appears that not only does size really matter but so does an eye-opening location.

That is why an international group of four professional star gazers have banded together to back Chile's Atacama desert as home to the world's biggest telescope, to be built in 2018 based on its geographical advantages.

The high-altitude Armazones mountain in the desert in northern Chilean desert is the perfect place for the European Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) to be set up, because of skies that are cloud-free 360 nights a year, they say.

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Home Computers Around The World Unite To Map The Milky Way

In the constellation Ophiucus resides NGC 6384, a spiral galaxy with a central bar structure and a possible central ring. Because NGC 6384 is nearly in line with the plane of our galaxy, all the stars in the image are foreground stars in our Milky Way. (Credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey)

From Science Daily:

Science Daily (Feb. 11, 2010) — At this very moment, tens of thousands of home computers around the world are quietly working together to solve the largest and most basic mysteries of our galaxy.

Enthusiastic and inquisitive volunteers from Africa to Australia are donating the computing power of everything from decade-old desktops to sleek new netbooks to help computer scientists and astronomers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute map the shape of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, just this month, the collected computing power of these humble home computers has surpassed one petaflop, a computing speed that surpasses the world's second fastest supercomputer.

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