Astronomy

Black Hole Powered Jets Plow Into Galaxy
05/15/2013 - 13:08

This multi-wavelength view shows 4C+29.30, a galaxy located some 850 million light years from Earth. The radio emission comes from two jets of particles that are speeding at millions of miles per hour away from a supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. The estimated mass of the black hole is about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. The ends of the jets show larger areas of radio emission located outside the galaxy.

 

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Moon and Earth have common water source
05/10/2013 - 11:29

Researchers used a multicollector ion microprobe to study hydrogen-deuterium ratios in lunar rock and on Earth. Their conclusion: The Moon’s water did not come from comets but was already present on Earth 4.5 billion years ago, when a giant collision sent material from Earth to form the Moon.

 

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Weather on Mars can be predicted accurately
05/08/2013 - 08:42

Snowstorms lashing down at the northern hemisphere of Mars during the icy cold winters may be predicted several weeks in advance, say researchers from the Tohoku University in Sendai (Japan) and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Katlenburg-Lindau (Germany) in their newest publication. For the first time, the scientists' calculations show a connection between these snowfalls and a special Martian weather phenomenon: fluctuations of pressure, temperature, wind speeds, and directions that in the northern hemisphere propagate in a wave-like manner and occur very regularly. For missions to the red planet exploring this region with rovers, such weather forecasts would offer the possibility of choosing a route that avoids heavy snow storms.

 

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Telling time on Saturn
05/03/2013 - 08:38

The discovery by Tim Kennelly, a University of Iowa junior majoring in physics and astronomy, is one of the first direct observations of seasonal changes in Saturn's magnetosphere. In addition, the finding carries over to all planets having a magnetosphere, including Earth.

 

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Astronomers discover that behind the most productive star systems more hide
04/18/2013 - 09:42

Using the telescope network ALMA, astronomers have been able to determine the positions of more than 100 of the most prolific galaxies with unprecedented accuracy. The exact positions could help to solve the mystery of the supposedly extremely high star formation rates: Accordingly the amount of radiation released is not from one but from several galaxies - each of which have more moderate star formation rate and in accordance with theoretical models.

 

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Puzzle of how spiral galaxies get their arms comes into focus
04/02/2013 - 13:12

Our own Milky Way, astronomers believe, is a spiral. Our solar system and Earth reside somewhere near one of its filamentous, swept-back arms. And nearly 70 percent of the galaxies closest to the Milky Way are spirals, suggesting they have taken the most ordinary of galactic forms in a universe with billions of galaxies.

 

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