Physicist makes new high-res panorama of Milky Way
Cobbling together 3000 individual photographs, a physicist has made a new high-resolution panoramic image of the full night sky, with the Milky Way galaxy as its centerpiece. Axel Mellinger, a...
View ArticlePicking Planets from Potatoes
New research indicates that there may be many more dwarf planets similar to Pluto in our solar system than previously thought. Studying these distant objects can help astrobiologists understand the...
View ArticleSun, Moon and Earth line up for Proba-2
ESAs Proba-2 microsatellite experienced a conjunction of the spheres on Tuesday, as the Sun, Moon and Earth all lined up in front of it.
View ArticleCelebrating 400 years of sunspot observations
(PhysOrg.com) -- In March of 1611, a German medical student named Johannes Fabricius left school at Leiden in Holland carrying several of the new-fangled telescopes that were beginning to appear in the...
View ArticleHappy anniversary, Neptune
Today, July 11, 2011 marks the first full orbit of the planet Neptune since its discovery on the night of September 23-24, 1846. But theres a lot more to learn about this anniversary than just the...
View ArticleVessel to contain cosmic force takes shape
At the heart of most celestial objects is a dynamo. The Earth's dynamo, spun to life in the molten metal core of our planet, generates a magnetic field that helps us find north and, perhaps more...
View ArticleFermi's latest gamma-ray census highlights cosmic mysteries
(PhysOrg.com) -- Every three hours, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope scans the entire sky and deepens its portrait of the high-energy universe. Every year, the satellite's scientists reanalyze...
View ArticleNASA's Dawn collects a bounty of beauty from Vesta
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new video from NASA's Dawn spacecraft takes us on a flyover journey above the surface of the giant asteroid Vesta.
View ArticleComet Lovejoy does the polar plunge
Lots of towns hold a polar plunge fundraising event in the winter. Duluth, Minnesota's version, where participants jump in Lake Superior every February, might just be the coldest. Comet Lovejoy's a...
View ArticleA solar eclipse sheds light on physics
On 29 May 1919, a shadow dance took place over the Caribbean which was to make history: While the new moon covered the blazingly bright disk of the Sun, astronomers around Arthur Stanley Eddington...
View ArticleA celestial butterfly emerges from its dusty cocoon
Some of the sharpest images ever made with ESO's Very Large Telescope have, for the first time, revealed what appears to be an ageing star giving birth to a butterfly-like planetary nebula. These...
View ArticleGaia produces stellar density map of the Milky Way
This image, based on housekeeping data from ESA's Gaia satellite, is no ordinary depiction of the heavens. While the image portrays the outline of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, and of its neighbouring...
View ArticleA thrift store find yields an astronomical mystery
A good mystery is often where you find it. Photographer Meagan Abell recently made a discovery during a thrift store expedition that not only set the internet abuzz, but also contains an interesting...
View ArticleWhat is A dwarf planet?
The term dwarf planet has been tossed around a lot in recent years. As part of a three-way categorization of bodies orbiting the sun, the term was adopted in 2006 due to the discovery of objects beyond...
View ArticleThe moon
Look up in the night sky. On a clear night, if you're lucky, you'll catch a glimpse of the moon shining in all it's glory. As Earth's only satellite, the moon has orbited our planet for over three and...
View ArticleNeil deGrasse Tyson weighs in on New Horizons' Pluto discoveries
The New Horizons spacecraft completed its 3 billion mile journey to Pluto in July and the discoveries continue to pour in every week as NASA scientists receive and analyze data and images from the...
View ArticleWhat is the heliocentric model of the universe?
The Scientific Revolution, which took in the 16th and 17th centuries, was a time of unprecedented learning and discovery. During this period, the foundations of modern science were laid, thanks to...
View ArticleResearchers investigate how light behaves in curved space
To investigate the influence of gravity on the propagation of light, researchers usually have to examine astronomical length scales and huge masses. However, physicists at...
View ArticleFixing the faults in our stars
The number 2016 divided by 4 equals 504, exactly – with no remainder, which makes the year 2016, like the upcoming years 2020, 2024 and 2028 (and beyond), a leap year. We will get an "extra" day,...
View ArticleClocking the rotation rate of a supermassive black hole
A recent observational campaign involving more than two dozen optical telescopes and NASA's space based SWIFT X-ray telescope allowed a team of astronomers to measure very accurately the rotational...
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