Scientists observe super-massive black holes using Keck Observatory in Hawaii
An international team of scientists has observed four super-massive black holes at the center of galaxies, which may provide new information on how these central black hole systems operate. Their...
View ArticleWhat activates a supermassive black hole?
A new study combining data from ESO's Very Large Telescope and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory has turned up a surprise. Most of the huge black holes in the centres of galaxies in the past 11...
View ArticleAn angry bird in the sky
(PhysOrg.com) -- A new image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope reveals the Lambda Centauri Nebula, a cloud of glowing hydrogen and newborn stars in the constellation of...
View ArticleSuspects in the quenching of star formation exonerated
Supermassive black holes millions to billions times the mass of our Sun lie at the heart of most, maybe all large galaxies. Some of these power brilliantly luminous, rapidly growing objects called...
View ArticleGalaxy mergers not the trigger for most black hole feeding frenzies
(PhysOrg.com) -- A survey of distant galaxies using the Hubble Space Telescope has put another nail in the coffin of the theory that galaxy mergers are the main trigger for turning quiescent...
View ArticleThe Tarantula glows with X-rays and infrared light
(PhysOrg.com) -- This spiderweb-like tangle of gas and dust is a star-forming region called 30 Doradus. It is one of the largest such regions located close to the Milky Way galaxy, and is found in the...
View ArticleAre pulsars giant permanent magnets?
Some of the most bizarre phenomenon in the universe are neutron stars. Very few things in our universe can rival the density in these remnants of supernova explosions. Neutron stars emit intense...
View ArticleA pocket of star formation
(PhysOrg.com) -- This new view shows a stellar nursery called NGC 3324. It was taken using the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile. The intense...
View ArticleAmes celebrates the 40th anniversary of Pioneer 10
Launched on March 2,1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the Asteroid belt, and the first spacecraft to make direct observations and obtain close-up images of Jupiter. Famed as...
View ArticleSolar Probe Plus: NASA solar study mission moves to next design stage
(PhysOrg.com) -- Two-thousand-degree temperatures, supersonic solar particles, intense radiation – all of this awaits NASA’s Solar Probe Plus during an unprecedented close-up study of the sun.
View ArticleRubber chicken flies into solar radiation storm
Last month, when the sun unleashed the most intense radiation storm since 2003, peppering satellites with charged particles and igniting strong auroras around both poles, a group of high school...
View ArticleRadiation-resistant circuits from mechanical parts can survive in space,...
University of Utah engineers designed microscopic mechanical devices that withstand intense radiation and heat, so they can be used in circuits for robots and computers exposed to radiation in space,...
View ArticleA surprisingly bright superbubble
(Phys.org)—This composite image shows a superbubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located about 160,000 light years from Earth.
View ArticlePlanets can form in the galactic center
(Phys.org)—At first glance, the center of the Milky Way seems like a very inhospitable place to try to form a planet. Stars crowd each other as they whiz through space like cars on a rush-hour freeway....
View ArticleAstronomers measure largest-ever magnetic field around massive star
(Phys.org)—A group of astronomers led by Gregg Wade of the Royal Military College of Canada have used the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at The University of Texas at Austin's McDonald Observatory and...
View ArticleFireworks in the early universe
Galaxies in the early universe grew fast by rapidly making new stars. Such prodigious star formation episodes, characterized by the intense radiation of the newborn stars, were often accompanied by...
View ArticleCygnus OB2: Probing a nearby stellar cradle
(Phys.org)—The Milky Way and other galaxies in the universe harbor many young star clusters and associations that each contain hundreds to thousands of hot, massive, young stars known as O and B stars....
View ArticleRecord-setting X-ray jet discovered
A jet of X-rays from a supermassive black hole 12.4 billion light years from Earth has been detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This is the most distant X-ray jet ever observed and gives...
View ArticleSome Earth bacteria survive and grow at extremely low pressure, may aid Mars...
(Phys.org)—University of Florida researchers have discovered for the first time that some Earth bacteria can live under the same low pressure conditions found on Mars.
View ArticleLight from the darkness
(Phys.org)—An evocative new image from ESO shows a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from their dusty stellar nursery. The new...
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