Astronomers have witnessed a never-seen-before event in observations by ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft – a collision between a pulsar and a ring of gas around a neighbouring star.
The rare passage, which took the pulsar plunging into and through this ring, illuminated the sky in gamma- and X-rays. It has revealed a remarkable new insight into the origin and content of ‘pulsar winds’, which has been a long-standing mystery. The scientists described the event as a natural but ‘scaled-
Interferometry Helps Discover Envelopes Around Supergiant Stars
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Cerro Paranal, Chile, and the CHARA Interferometer at Mount Wilson, California, a team of French and North American astronomers has discovered envelopes around three Cepheids, including the Pole star. This is the first time that matter is found surrounding members of this important class of rare and very luminous stars whose luminosity varies in a very regu
Making tubes useful often means joining them to other tubes and linking them together in networks. Easy enough to do with standard water pipes — but on the nanoscale, joining nanotubes is hard to do.
Efforts to link nanotubes have usually begun with the most familiar kind, cylinders whose structure is equivalent to one or more rolled-up sheets of a layered crystal like graphite. Now researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s National Center for Electron Mi
From one international cooperation to another, the crew of the International Space Station (ISS), American William McArthur and Russian Valery Tokarev, yesterday congratulated the Olympic athletes gathered in Turin, Italy, for the closing ceremony of the 20th Olympic Winter Games.
In a special message played to athletes and spectators gathered in the Stadio Olimpico, McArthur and Tokarev, the ISS Expedition 12 crew, applauded the accomplishments of the world’s athletes who competed in the
This new Hubble image reveals the gigantic Pinwheel galaxy, one of the best known examples of “grand design spirals”, and its supergiant star-forming regions in unprecedented detail. The image is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy ever released.
Giant galaxies weren’t assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (the Pinwheel Galaxy). It is the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy bey
At the latest meeting of the European Space Agency’s Earth Observation Programme Board, which took place at ESA’s Headquarters in Paris on 23 and 24 February, ESA received the green light from its Member States to build and launch a CryoSat recovery mission, CryoSat-2.
The launch of the CryoSat spacecraft was unfortunately aborted on 8 October 2005 due to a malfunction of its Rockot launcher, which resulted in the total loss of the spacecraft.
“This decision is very important,
These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the Ausonia Mensa massif on Mars.
The HRSC obtained these images during orbit 506 with a ground resolution of approximately 37.6 metres per pixel. The scenes show the region of Hesperia Planum, containing the massif, at approximately 30.3° South and 97.8° East. North is to the right in these images.
Ausonia Mensa is a large remnant mountain with several impact c
If you’re watching the Winter Olympics, you know that snow and ice are an integral part of the sports. But did you know that snow and ice need to be different for each sport? NASA scientist Peter Wasilewski’s studies of ice using polarized light create beautiful colored pictures of the snow and ice, and enable people to see if the snow and ice is “right” for each type of sport.
Wasilewski, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., uses polarized light t
Scientists using NASA’s Swift satellite have detected a new kind of cosmic explosion. The event appears to be a precursor to a supernova, which is expected to reach peak brightness in about a week’s time. UK astronomers and their colleagues around the world are watching closely as they have never seen an explosion of this kind before.
Satellites and the world’s largest telescopes are now trained on the sight, watching and waiting. The explosion has the trappings of a gamma-ray burst (
ESA astronaut Thomas Reiter from Germany will soon become the first European to undertake a long-duration mission onboard the International Space Station (ISS) following his dispatch on the next Shuttle mission (STS-121), currently scheduled for May.
That mission, which is due to last six to seven months, will mark many important milestones for European astronauts, European science and European control centres.
Two days after arriving, Reiter will take over as Flight Engineer 2
VLT Image of SN 2006X in Spiral Galaxy Messier 100
Possibly similar to what our own Milky Way looks like, Messier 100 [1] is a grand design spiral galaxy that presents an intricate structure, with a bright core and two prominent arms, showing numerous young and hot massive stars as well as extremely hot knots (HII regions). Two smaller arms are also seen starting from the inner part and reaching towards the larger spiral arms.
The galaxy, located 60 million light-years
New research shows X-ray bursts from the Sun cause dramatic alterations to the planet’s ionosphere
Boston University astronomers announced today the first clear evidence that solar flares change the upper atmosphere of Mars. In an article published in the February 24th issue of the journal Science, the researchers describe how X-ray bursts from the Sun in April 2001 recorded by satellites near Earth reached Mars and caused dramatic enhancements to the planet’s ionosp
New Hubble Images Offer Best View yet of Distant Planet and its Three Satellites
In the Feb. 23 issue of the journal Nature, a team led by Dr. Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., describes its discovery of two new moons around Pluto – a finding that made the ninth planet the first Kuiper Belt object known to have multiple satellites.
In a companion paper, also in the Feb. 23 Nature, discovery team members led by Dr. A
NASA’s Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer astronomy satellite is back in full operation, its aging onboard software control system rejuvenated and its mission extended by enterprising scientists and engineers after a near-death experience in December 2004.
Observations with the orbiting telescope resumed Nov. 1, 2005, about ten months after the third of four onboard reaction wheels, used to precisely point the spacecraft and hold it steady, stopped spinning. After two months of e
Researchers quantify stratosphere damage with an eye toward ozone hole recovery
A new atmospheric model is able to quantify man-made versus naturally occurring damage to the stratosphere with an eye toward repairing the diminishing ozone layer that is located within the stratosphere. That’s the premise of a paper published in this week’s Science titled, “Anthropogenic and Natural Influences in the Evolution of Lower Stratospheric Cooling.”
Researchers used a model to
A new horizon for mass fatality radiology
A team led by a University of Leicester forensic pathologist is believed to be the first in the world to use a new radiological approach for mass fatality investigation.
Traditionally 2 types of radiology are used in mass fatality and temporary mortuary investigations -that of fluoroscopy and plain x-ray.
These techniques however are time consuming, yield limited information and are a health and safety hazard to those workin
Feedback
