Cosmology

WASHINGTON -- Don’t worry about when the world as we know it might end. NASA has calculated that our entire Milky Way galaxy will crash into a neighboring galaxy with a direct head-on hit—in 4 billion years. Astronomers in a NASA news conference Thursday said that years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope provide grisly details of a long-anticipated galactic smashup. Astronomers had seen the Andromeda galaxy coming at us, but...  

Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists have developed this simulation of the head-on collision of our Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. Estimated to occur in 4 billion years.  

While astronomy and cosmology have made amazing advances in the last century, many deep mysteries remain. The staff of Science magazine consulted among themselves and spoke to professional researchers. The result: they identified eight areas ...  

Don't worry about when the world as we know it might end. NASA has calculated that our entire Milky Way galaxy will crash into a neighboring galaxy with a direct head-on hit -- in 4 billion years. Astronomers in a NASA news conference Thursday said that years of observations from the Hubble Space Telescope provide grisly details of a long-anticipated galactic smashup. Astronomers had seen the Andromeda galaxy coming at us, but thought there...  

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of the spiral galaxy known as ESO 498-G5. One interesting feature of this galaxy is that its spiral arms wind all the way into the center, so that ESO 498-G5′s core looks like a bit like a miniature spiral galaxy. [...]  

WASHINGTON (AP) — Don't worry about when the world as we know it might end. NASA has calculated that our entire Milky Way galaxy will crash into a neighboring galaxy with a head-on hit — in four billion years.Astronomers in a Thursday NASA news conference announced that observations from the Hubble Space Telescope detail a long-anticipated galactic smash-up. Astronomers had seen the Andromeda galaxy coming at us, but thought there was a...  

Several libraries around the state including Merrimack, Amherst, Bedford and Goffstown have been provided with Orion Starblast 4.5 inch Astronomical Telescopes that patrons can borrow.  With the summer approaching, this could be an engaging ...  

The Hubble Space Telescope turned 22 years old this week, meaning it's probably old enough to get a job and stop asking its parents for money. Just kidding. But the telescope's anniversary is a good excuse to take a minute to look at some of the most amazing images ever captured -- all courtesy of Hubble's 22 years in service. From far-off galaxies and nebulae to planets right here in our own solar system, here are some of the best images...  

Paris (ESA) May 16, 2012 A partnership with the UK's Faulkes Telescope Project promises to boost the Agency's space hazards research while helping students to discover potentially dangerous space rocks. ESA's Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme is keeping watch over space hazards, including disruptive space weather, debris objects in Earth orbit and asteroids that pass close enough to cause concern. The as  

Astronomers using NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have discovered a planet that orbits so close to its parent star its surface may be evaporating. The planet’s evaporating surface is believed to be leaving behind a trail similar to that of a comet’s tail. The planet is 1500 light-years from Earth and is believed to be a Read The Full Story  

Baltimore MD (SPX) May 08, 2012 This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our moon. Astronomers didn't aim NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5-6. Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth  

The SLAC-built Large Area Telescope (LAT), the main instrument of the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, has been studying the gamma-ray sky for almost four years. During that time, the LAT has identified hundreds of gamma-ray sources, including pulsars and active galactic nuclei. It has shown that the Crab Nebula isn't the steady emitter of gamma rays it's long been thought to be. The LAT has catalogued lightning in the Earth's atmosphere and...  

(Phys.org) -- Caltech has taken over operation from NASA of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX), a space telescope that for the last nine years has been surveying the cosmos in ultraviolet light. In this first agreement of its kind, NASA is lending the telescope to Caltech, which has led the mission and will continue operating and managing it through the support of private funders.  

Redondo Beach CA (SPX) May 10, 2012 Northrop Grumman has completed the flight composite components for the structure that connects the Optical Telescope Element to the spacecraft on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Northrop Grumman is under contract to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for the design and development of Webb's sunshield, telescope and spacecraft. The flight structure known as the Deployab  

Washington DC (SPX) May 09, 2012 This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could seem like a quiet patch of sky at first glance. But zooming into the central part of a galaxy cluster - one of the largest structures of the Universe - is rather like looking at the eye of the storm. Clusters of galaxies are large groups consisting of dozens to hundreds of galaxies, which are bound together by gravity. The gal  

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD – This mottled landscape showing the impact crater Tycho is among the most violent-looking places on our moon. Astronomers didn’t aim NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to study Tycho, however. The image was taken in preparation to observe the transit of Venus across the sun’s face on June 5th-6th. [...]  

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD – The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been at the cutting edge of research into what happens to stars like our sun at the ends of their lives. One stage that stars pass through as they run out of nuclear fuel is called the preplanetary or protoplanetary nebula [...]  

The Large Area Telescope (LAT), built by SLAC for the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, collects information on high-energy gamma rays from numerous sources in the sky. Among these are small, elusive objects called pulsars, which spin up to hundreds of...  

A hunk of space glass this ain't Analysis  Funding cutbacks and an arguably anti-science fiscal policy haven't stopped exciting new projects emerging from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.…  

LONDON, May 29 (UPI) -- A European contribution to the James Webb Space Telescope left London Heathrow airport Tuesday bound for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, officials said. The Mid Infra-Red Instrument (Miri) was flown on a British ...  

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD – Several million young stars are vying for attention in a new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, a star-forming complex located in the heart of the Tarantula nebula. The new image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled [...]  

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD – These bright stars shining through what looks like a haze in the night sky are part of a young stellar grouping in one of the largest known star formation regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The image was [...]  

Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s proposed FINESSE space telescope may not hunt for exoplanets, but it will find out what they’re made of. (...)Read the rest of JPL Wants To FINESSE Info From Exoplanets (236 words) © Jason Major for Universe Today, 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Post tags: exoplanets, FINESSE, JPL, planets, space telescope, [...]  

Europe shipped one of its big contributions to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on Tuesday. The Mid Infra-Red Instrument (Miri) was flown out of London Heathrow on a British Airways jet, bound for Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center.  

Written by Michele Johnson NASA’s Ames Research Center Moffett Field, CA – Astronomers may have detected evidence of a possible planet disintegrating under the searing heat of its host star located 1,500 light-years from Earth. Similar to a debris-trailing comet, the super Mercury-size planet candidate is theorized to fashion a dusty tail. But the tail [...]  

LOS ANGELES — The giant asteroid Vesta got clobbered not once but twice, and it has the scars to prove it. Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope spied a huge depression in the asteroid's south pole, scientists surmised it was carved by a collision with a celestial object, most likely ...  

-- New Particle Discovered at CERN -- 3.4 Billion Pixel Telescope Plans Move One Step Further -- God particle discovery due within months -- Textbook Electrodynamics May Contradict Relativity -- 3.2bn-pixel camera in LSST telescope will bring revelations about space -- Spot The Higgs In The DZERO VZ Mass Plot -- Searching for the elusive Higgs Particle -- Do the Milky Way's companions spell trouble for dark matter? -- Gamma Ray Bursts Found...  

Written by Whitney Clavin NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Pasadena, CA – While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both. The galaxy, which is a round elliptical galaxy with a thin disk embedded inside, is [...]  

NASA spokesman J.D. Harrington said the agency had been spending about $100,000 ... [Spectacular Photos from Hubble Space Telescope] Chris Martin, the Caltech-based principal investigator for Galex, said his team currently has four partners that together ...  

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will study Venus's atmosphere during an upcoming opportunity where Venus is passing in front of the Sun. Hubble cannot look at the Sun directly, so astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Moon, using it as a mirror. The next time Venus will pass in front of the Sun will be in the year 2117.  

Just like human eyes, the Hubble Space Telescope can’t observe the sun directly – so NASA scientists plan to study Venus’s solar transit in June by using the moon as a mirror. As Venus passes across the face of the sun on June 5 and 6, the Hubble team will point the telescope at Earth’s [...]  

At the Brain Pickings blog, Maria Popova has some amazing images, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope during its 22 years of operation. I love this one. It's such a great reminder of the time scales of space—the remnants of things that happened 1000 ...  

The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of infrared radiation. The galaxies are some of the faintest and furthest objects seen by Herschel, and open a new window on the birth of stars in the early Universe. Astronomers estimate that their are billions and billions of galaxies in the observable universe (as well as some seven trillion dwarf...  

“Red and dead” is the unflattering label astronomers attach to giant elliptical galaxies full of aged stars. But funeral plans may be premature. With the help of the Hubble Space Telescope’s recently enhanced vision, researchers have uncovered flickers of star formation in these quiescent galaxies. Nobody had ever observed star birth in red-and-dead galaxies... Dull, red-and-dead galaxies like Messier 87 (below) may not look as pretty as the...  

[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366. While it lacks the elegant spiral arms of many larger galaxies, NGC 2366 is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars. The starry mist streaking across this image obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope ...  

On April 24th, the Hubble Space Telescope celebrated its 22nd birthday, marking more than a decade of cosmic discoveries and insights. The iconic telescope launched on April 24th in 1990 on the Space Shuttle “Discovery,” and was the largest and most sensitive optical-light telescope ever launched into space.  

A busy cosmic landscape of bright stars against a dust-filled, hazy background is the focus of a newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA featured the photo on its website today (April 24) just in time for the prolific observatory's 22nd birthday.  

Nasa scientists say the cluster is one of the densest collections of galaxies in a nearby universe and as a result this proximity means the galaxies often interact violently. The "natural-colour" image, released by the space agency combines data from 2006 ...  

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is soliciting information to conduct market research to improve its understanding regarding the current state-of-the-art of available telescopes and/or telescope prototypes. NASA is seeking broad ...  

"As a kid, one time, I got a telescope as a gift," the owner of Burnaby-based Canadian Telescopes says. "I was hooked." Looking at the sky through a telescope is much more intimate and personal than seeing images taken from the Hubble Space Telescope ...  

Unlike space telescopes, ground-based telescopes must deal with observational distortions from atmospheric turbulence that degrades the spatial resolution of images. Adaptive optics systems (Note 2) correct for the distortion of light in real ...  

A team of scientists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., now is developing an instrument that would image and characterize planets beyond the solar system possibly from a high-altitude balloon has borrowed a page from the Webb ...  

Astronomers may have detected evidence of a possible planet disintegrating under the searing heat of its host star located 1,500 light-years from Earth. Similar to a debris-trailing comet, the super Mercury-size planet candidate is theorized to fashion a dusty tail. But the tail won't last for long. Scientists calculate that, at the current rate of evaporation, the dusty world could be completely vaporized within 200 million years. A...  

Daily MailGravitational Tug of 'Invisible' Exoplanet DiscoveredDiscovery NewsNASA's Kepler space telescope finds planets beyond the solar system by looking for dips in starlight caused by planets parading past their parent stars, relative to Kepler's point of view. But there's another method by which scientists can find sibling ...Astronomers lift the veil on hidden exoplanetphysicsworld.comScientists spot unseen planet in Kepler scope...  

Telegraph.co.ukRobots, Platinum, and Tiny Space Telescopes: The Pitch for Mining AsteroidsThe AtlanticThat would mean that anyone could have a space telescope on the order of one to ten million dollars. Now that may seem like a lot of money for you personally because you probably don't have that kind of money sitting around, but a space telescope for ...Mining Asteroids in SpacePatch.comBus-Size Asteroid Zips Close By EarthSpace.comEarth...  

And Irish scientists have played a major part in its design and development. Yesterday saw the handover of the first instrument that will fly on board the James Webb Space Telescope, the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope. Due for launch in 2018 ...  

Detective astronomers have discovered at least one unseen alien planet, and possibly another, around a distant star by observing the odd behavior of a planet already known to orbit the same star. The newfound planet has about the mass of Saturn ...  

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The giant asteroid Vesta got clobbered not once but twice, and it has the scars to prove it. Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope spied a huge depression in the asteroid's south pole, scientists surmised it was carved by a collision ...  

Nasa's Kepler space telescope has provided fresh insight on the colossal explosions that can afflict some stars. These enormous releases of magnetic ... in the journal Nature. The biggest recorded flare on the Sun was probably the "Carrington ...  

A spacecraft designed to stare at the sun is back up and running after a technical glitch temporarily sidelined the observatory for just over a week. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission by NASA and the European Space Agency ...  

The giant asteroid Vesta got clobbered not once but twice, and it has the scars to prove it. Ever since the Hubble Space Telescope spied a huge depression in the asteroid's south pole, scientists surmised it was carved by a collision with a ...  

Some time in the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources, Inc. will launch a series of mass-produced 9" space telescopes, dubbed Arkyd Series 100 spacecraft. They're specifically designed to identify which of the roughly 8,900 near-Earth asteroids are ...  

The Hubble Space Telescope launched on April 24, 1990, ushering in a new era in space exploration. From its low-earth orbit, the telescope can take pictures without interference from the planet's atmosphere, snapping photographs in visible light ...  

Washington, May 5 : NASA's Hubble Space Telescope will observe the transit of Venus across the sun's face on June 5th and 6th. Since Hubble cannot look at the sun directly, astronomers are planning to point the telescope at the Earth's moon, using it as a ...  

Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a huge black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii were among ...  

He has worked in the fields of observational cosmology, X-ray astronomy, and more recently exoplanetary science. His book 'Gravity's Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos' will be available Aug. 7th ...