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Astronomers Find Bounty of Failed Stars

By Guest PostOctober 14, 2011Sciencealeks scholz, astronomical oddballs, brown dwarfs, Chile, dublin institute of advanced studies, eth zurich, failed stars, garching, gas clouds, Germany, giant planets, hawaii, ireland, jupiter, koraljka muzic, mariangela bonavita, motohide tamura, ngc 1333, optical and infrared wavelengths, planets, ray jayawardhana, rho ophiuchi star, sonyc, stars, subaru telescope, substellar objects in nearby young clusters, switzerland, university of toronto, very large telescope, vincent geers, vlt

*One youngster only six times heftier than Jupiter*

TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has discovered over two dozen new free-floating brown dwarfs, including a lightweight youngster only about six times heftier than Jupiter, that reside in two young star clusters. What’s more, one cluster contains a surprising surplus of them, harbouring half as many of these astronomical oddballs as normal stars.

“Our findings suggest once again that objects not much bigger than Jupiter could form the same way as stars do. In other words, nature appears to have more than one trick up its sleeve for producing planetary mass objects,” says Professor Ray Jayawardhana, Canada Research Chair in Observational Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and leader of the international team that made the discovery. (more…)

Spitzer Captures Infrared Rays From a Sunflower

By Guest PostMarch 5, 2011Sciencedistant galaxy, dust lanes, infrared light, light years, messier 63, microns, NASA, spiral arm, spiral galaxies, spitzer space telescope, stars, sunflower galaxy, wavelengths, whirlpool galaxy

The various spiral arm segments of the Sunflower galaxy, also known as Messier 63, show up vividly in this image taken in infrared light by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared light is sensitive to the dust lanes in spiral galaxies, which appear dark in visible-light images. Spitzer’s view reveals complex structures that trace the galaxy’s spiral arm pattern.

Messier 63 lies 37 million-light years away — not far from the well-known Whirlpool galaxy and the associated Messier 51 group of galaxies. (more…)

Herschel Measures Dark Matter for Star-Forming Galaxies

By Guest PostFebruary 21, 2011Sciencealexandre amblard, asantha cooray, astronomers, dark matter, distant galaxies, european space agency, exotic substance, Galaxy, herschel, herschel space observatory, jamie bock, longer wavelength infrared light, massive galaxies, Milky Way, Nature, star forming galaxies, stars, telescope, universe, william danchi

PASADENA, Calif. — The Herschel Space Observatory has revealed how much dark matter it takes to form a new galaxy bursting with stars. Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission supported with important NASA contributions.

The findings are a key step in understanding how dark matter, an invisible substance permeating our universe, contributed to the birth of massive galaxies in the early universe. (more…)

New View of Family Life in the North American Nebula

By Guest PostFebruary 10, 2011Sciencecontamination, cosmic community, earth, gulf of mexico, infrared view, light years, luisa rebull, micron, NASA, north american nebula, spitzer image, spitzer space telescope, stars, toddler stars, wavelength, young stars, zodiacal dust

Pasadena, Calif. — Stars at all stages of development, from dusty little tots to young adults, are on display in a new image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

This cosmic community is called the North American nebula. In visible light, the region resembles the North American continent, with the most striking resemblance being the Gulf of Mexico. But in Spitzer’s infrared view, the continent disappears. Instead, a swirling landscape of dust and young stars comes into view.

“One of the things that makes me so excited about this image is how different it is from the visible image, and how much more we can see in the infrared than in the visible,” said Luisa Rebull of NASA’s Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. Rebull is lead author of a paper about the observations, accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. “The Spitzer image reveals a wealth of detail about the dust and the young stars here.” (more…)

NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft

By Guest PostJanuary 23, 2011Scienceairborne telescopes, atmosphere, crater, earth, ed stone, icy rings, magnetic north, Miranda, mysterious seventh planet, NASA, neptune, saturn, south poles, Space, stars, suzanne dodd, uranian equator, uranus, voyager 2 spacecraft, voyager spacecraft

As NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft made the only close approach to date of our mysterious seventh planet Uranus 25 years ago, Project Scientist Ed Stone and the Voyager team gathered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to pore over the data coming in.

Images of the small, icy Uranus moon Miranda were particularly surprising. Since small moons tend to cool and freeze over rapidly after their formation, scientists had expected a boring, ancient surface, pockmarked by crater-upon-weathered-crater. Instead they saw grooved terrain with linear valleys and ridges cutting through the older terrain and sometimes coming together in chevron shapes. They also saw dramatic fault scarps, or cliffs. All of this indicated that periods of tectonic and thermal activity had rocked Miranda’s surface in the past. (more…)

Go Ask ALICE: Learning About the Big Bang

By Guest PostDecember 15, 20101 commentSciencea lead ion collider experiment, alice, bang, big, big bang, CERN, european organization for nuclear research, galaxies, geneva, john harris, Large Hadron Collider, lhc, particle accelerator, particles, planets, soup, stars, switzerland, universe, yale

Nearly 14 billion years ago, the universe began with a bang — a big one.

Scientists believe that the universe and everything within it began as an extremely hot, dense “soup” that eventually gave rise to galaxies, stars, planets and life and that continues to expand to this day.

Now scientists around the world are pushing back the frontiers of our understanding about the moment the universe was born using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a giant particle accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland. (more…)

NSF Signs $34.5-million Operating Agreement With University Of Wisconsin as Antarctic Neutrino Detector Nears Completion

By Guest PostNovember 22, 2010Scienceantarctic ice sheet, atmosphere, atomic nuclei, big science, digital optical modules, distant galaxies, earth, Germany, ice, icecube, icecube neutrino observatory, jim yeck, karl a erb, Milky Way, national science foundation, neutrino detector, neutrinos, south pole station, stars, sub-atomic particles, telescope, university of wisconsin-madison, water

The National Science Foundation has signed a five-year, $34.5-million agreement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to operate a unique telescope–a cubic kilometer in volume–buried in the Antarctic ice sheet between 1,400 meters and 2,400 meters deep.

The collaborative agreement covers the cost of operating the IceCube Neutrino Observatory, located in the ice under the U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The observatory records the rare collisions of neutrinos, elusive sub-atomic particles, with the atomic nuclei of the water frozen into ice. Neutrinos come from the sun, cosmic rays interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, and dramatic astronomical sources such as exploding stars in the Milky Way and other distant galaxies. Trillions of neutrinos stream through the human body at any given moment, but they rarely interact with regular matter, and researchers want to know more about them and where they come from. (more…)

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