Space In The News: December 2014

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

The Milky Way's new neighbor: Tiny and isolated dwarf galaxy discovered

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 05:43 AM PST

The Milky Way, the galaxy we live in, is part of a cluster of more than 50 galaxies that make up the 'Local Group', a collection that includes the famous Andromeda galaxy and many other far smaller objects. Now a Russian-American team has added to the canon, finding a tiny and isolated dwarf galaxy almost 7 million light years away. The new galaxy, named KKs3 is located in the southern sky in the direction of the constellation of Hydrus and its stars have only one ten-thousandth of the mass of the Milky Way.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

The Milky Way's new neighbor: Tiny and isolated dwarf galaxy discovered

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 05:43 AM PST

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

Sun sizzles in high-energy X-rays

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 05:53 PM PST

For the first time, a mission designed to set its eyes on black holes and other objects far from our solar system has turned its gaze back closer to home, capturing images of our sun. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, has taken its first picture of the sun, producing the most sensitive solar portrait ever taken in high-energy X-rays.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Sun sizzles in high-energy X-rays

Posted: 22 Dec 2014 05:53 PM PST

Friday, December 19, 2014

ScienceDaily: Stars News

NASA's Kepler reborn, makes first exoplanet find of new mission

Posted: 18 Dec 2014 04:44 PM PST

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2. The discovery was made when astronomers and engineers devised an ingenious way to repurpose Kepler for the K2 mission and continue its search of the cosmos for other worlds.

Kepler proves it can still find planets

Posted: 18 Dec 2014 09:08 AM PST

To paraphrase Mark Twain, the report of the Kepler spacecraft's death was greatly exaggerated. Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, Kepler is still alive and working. The evidence comes from the discovery of a new super-Earth using data collected during Kepler's 'second life.'

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

NASA's Kepler reborn, makes first exoplanet find of new mission

Posted: 18 Dec 2014 04:44 PM PST

Kepler proves it can still find planets

Posted: 18 Dec 2014 09:08 AM PST

Thursday, December 18, 2014

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

'Perfect storm' quenching star formation around a supermassive black hole

Posted: 17 Dec 2014 11:10 AM PST

Astronomers have discovered that modest black holes can shut down star formation by producing turbulence. High-energy jets powered by supermassive black holes can blast away a galaxy's star-forming fuel, resulting in so-called "red and dead" galaxies: those brimming with ancient red stars yet containing little or no hydrogen gas to create new ones.

ScienceDaily: Black Holes News

'Perfect storm' quenching star formation around a supermassive black hole

Posted: 17 Dec 2014 11:10 AM PST

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Surprising theorists, stars within middle-aged clusters are of similar age
'Perfect storm' quenching star formation around a supermassive black hole
The hot blue stars of messier 47

Surprising theorists, stars within middle-aged clusters are of similar age

Posted: 17 Dec 2014 12:40 PM PST

An examination of middle-aged star clusters reveals an unexpectedly narrow age range among their stars, suggesting that large groups of stars evolve differently than previously understood.

'Perfect storm' quenching star formation around a supermassive black hole

Posted: 17 Dec 2014 11:10 AM PST

The hot blue stars of messier 47

Posted: 17 Dec 2014 04:43 AM PST

Messier 47 is located approximately 1600 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Puppis (the poop deck of the mythological ship Argo). It was first noticed some time before 1654 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Battista Hodierna and was later independently discovered by Charles Messier himself, who apparently had no knowledge of Hodierna's earlier observation. Although it is bright and easy to see, Messier 47 is one of the least densely populated open clusters. Only around 50 stars are visible in a region about 12 light-years across, compared to other similar objects which can contain thousands of stars.

Wednesday, December 17, 2014

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

Is the Higgs Boson a piece of the matter-antimatter puzzle?

Posted: 16 Dec 2014 07:04 AM PST

Several experiments, including the BaBar experiment have helped explain some – but not all – of the imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe. Now theorists have laid out a possible method for determining if the Higgs Boson is involved. Why there's more matter than antimatter is one of the biggest questions confounding particle physicists and cosmologists, and it cuts to the heart of our own existence.

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Stretched-out solid exoplanets

Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST

Astronomers could soon be able to find rocky planets stretched out by the gravity of the stars they orbit. Since the first discovery in 1993, more than 1800 planets have been found in orbit around stars other than our Sun. These 'exoplanets' are incredibly diverse, with some gaseous like Jupiter and some mostly rocky like the Earth. The worlds also orbit their stars at very different distances, from less than a million km to nearly 100 billion km away.

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Stretched-out solid exoplanets

Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:44 AM PST

ScienceDaily: Nebulae News

NASA Voyager: 'Tsunami wave' still flies through interstellar space

Posted: 15 Dec 2014 05:42 PM PST

The Voyager 1 spacecraft has experienced three shock waves. The most recent shock wave, first observed in February 2014, still appears to be going on. One wave, previously reported, helped researchers determine that Voyager 1 had entered interstellar space.

Saturday, December 13, 2014

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Nuclear fragments could help uncover the origins of life-supporting planets

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 06:00 PM PST

New research describes how recreating isotopes that occur when a star explodes, can help physicists understand where life-supporting elements may be found in space.

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

Is an understanding of dark matter around the corner? Experimentalists unsure

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 07:16 AM PST

Scientists working on the three newest dark matter experiments are hopeful that we'll soon understand a quarter of the universe -- but they're making no promises.

Real data rather than theory used to measure the cosmos

Posted: 12 Dec 2014 05:49 AM PST

For the first time researchers have measured large distances in the Universe using data, rather than calculations related to general relativity.

Friday, December 12, 2014

ScienceDaily: Galaxies News

Interstellar mystery solved by supercomputer simulations

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 08:56 AM PST

An interstellar mystery of why stars form has been solved thanks to the most realistic supercomputer simulations of galaxies yet made. Theoretical astrophysicists found that stellar activity -- like supernova explosions or even just starlight -- plays a big part in the formation of other stars and the growth of galaxies.

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 08:55 AM PST

Scientists have picked up an atypical photon emission in X-rays coming from space, and say it could be evidence for the existence of a particle of dark matter. If confirmed, it could open up new perspectives in cosmology.

ScienceDaily: Extrasolar Planets News

Swarms of Pluto-size objects kick up dust around adolescent Sun-like star

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 01:25 PM PST

Astronomers may have detected the dusty hallmarks of an entire family of Pluto-size objects swarming around an adolescent version of our own Sun. By making detailed observations of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the star known as HD 107146, the astronomers detected an unexpected increase in the concentration of millimeter-size dust grains in the disk's outer reaches. This surprising increase, which begins remarkably far -- about 13 billion kilometers -- from the host star, may be the result of Pluto-size planetesimals stirring up the region, causing smaller objects to collide and blast themselves apart.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

Nuclear fragments could help uncover the origins of life-supporting planets

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 06:00 PM PST

New research describes how recreating isotopes that occur when a star explodes, can help physicists understand where life-supporting elements may be found in space.

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 08:55 AM PST

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

Posted: 11 Dec 2014 08:55 AM PST

Thursday, December 11, 2014

ScienceDaily: Dark Matter News

Physicists explain puzzling particle collisions

Posted: 10 Dec 2014 10:13 AM PST

An anomaly spotted at the Large Hadron Collider has prompted scientists to reconsider a mathematical description of the underlying physics. By considering two forces that are distinct in everyday life but unified under extreme conditions, they have simplified one description of the interactions of elementary particles. Their new version makes specific predictions about events that future experiments should observe and could help to reveal 'new physics,' particles or processes that have yet to be discovered.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

ScienceDaily: Stars News

Astronomers identify gas spirals as a nursery of twin stars through ALMA

Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:16 AM PST

Astronomers have found spiral arms of molecular gas and dust around the "baby twin" stars, binary protostars. Gas motions to supply materials to the twin were also identified. These observational results unveil, for the first time, the mechanism of the birth and growth of binary stars, which are ubiquitous throughout the universe.

ScienceDaily: Cosmic Rays News

NASA-funded FOXSI to observe X-rays from Sun

Posted: 09 Dec 2014 05:23 AM PST

NASA regularly watches the Sun in numerous wavelengths because different wavelengths provide information about different temperatures and processes in space. Looking at all the wavelengths together helps to provide a complete picture of what's occurring on the sun over 92 million miles away -- but no one has been able to focus on high energy X-rays from the Sun until recently.