Space
The changing Larsen-B Ice Shelf captured by Envisat on 22 February 2007 with its Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR). The Larsen Ice Shelf is a series of three shelves – A (the smallest), B and C (the largest) – that extend from north to south along the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. Changes in ice shelves are believed to be indicators of climate change, as evidence suggests high latitudes experience the greatest atmospheric warming. Credits: ESA
The changing Larsen-B Ice Shelf, as witnessed over five years by ESA’s Envisat, to mark the week of the fifth anniversary of the…
There are many galaxies of different shapes and sizes around us today. Roughly half are gas-poor elliptical-shaped galaxies with little new star formation activity, and half are gas-rich spiral and irregular galaxies with high star formation activity. Observations have shown that gas-poor galaxies are most often found near the centre of crowded galaxy clusters, whereas spirals spend most of their lifetime in solitude.
An extended view of the Hubble image also shows the gravitational lensing effect -- an optical illusion -- caused by the cluster's gravitational tidal forces of the cluster…
On February 28, 2007, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its ultimate journey to Pluto. This flyby gave scientists a unique opportunity to study Jupiter using the package of instruments available on New Horizons, while coordinating observations from both space- and ground-based telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
In preparation for New Horizon's approach of Jupiter, Chandra took 5-hour exposures of Jupiter on Feb. 8, 10 and 24. In this new composite image, data from those separate Chandra's observations were combined, and then…
During Rosetta's recent Mars swingby, the OSIRIS cameras captured a series of images of Mars and of Phobos transiting Mars' disk. The OSIRIS team have produced a cool animated sequence and a 3D view of the Red Planet.
The animated sequences (one faster, one slower) show the shadow of Phobos transiting Mars' disk on 24 February; the images were captured around 22:08 CET, a few hours prior to Rosetta's successful Mars swingby on 25 February.
The animated sequence shows the shadow of Phobos transiting Mars' disk on 24 February; the sequence was captured around 22:08 CET, a few hours prior to…
Scientists were startled when they discovered in 2004 that the center of our galaxy is emitting gamma rays with energies in the tens of trillions of electronvolts.
Now astrophysicists at The University of Arizona, Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of Adelaide (Australia) have discovered a mechanism that might produce these high-energy gamma rays. The black hole at the center of our Milky Way could be working like a cosmic particle accelerator, revving up protons that smash at incredible speeds into lower energy protons and creating high-energy gamma rays, they report.
This…
Comet McNaught, the Great Comet of 2007, has been delighting those who have seen it with the unaided eye as a spectacular display in the evening sky. Pushing ESO's New Technology Telescope to its limits, a team of European astronomers have obtained the first, and possibly unique, detailed observations of this object. Their images show spectacular jets of gas from the comet spiralling several thousands of kilometres into space, while the spectra reveal the presence of sodium in its atmosphere, something seen very rarely.
Comet C/2006 P1 (McNaught) has rightly earned the title of a 'Great…
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has captured for the first time enough light from planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets, to identify signatures of molecules in their atmospheres. The landmark achievement is a significant step toward being able to detect possible life on rocky exoplanets and comes years before astronomers had anticipated.
"This is an amazing surprise," said Spitzer project scientist Dr. Michael Werner of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We had no idea when we designed Spitzer that it would make such a dramatic step in characterizing…
The ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer, which allows astronomers to scrutinise objects with a precision equivalent to that of a 130-m telescope, is proving itself an unequalled success every day. One of the latest instruments installed, AMBER, has led to a flurry of scientific results, an anthology of which is being published this week as special features in the research journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
"With its unique capabilities, the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) has created itself a niche in which it provide answers to many astronomical questions, from the shape of stars, to discs…
Integral's latest survey of the gamma-ray universe continues to change the way astronomers think of the high-energy cosmos. With over seventy percent of the sky now observed by Integral, astronomers have been able to construct the largest catalogue yet of individual gamma-ray-emitting celestial objects. And there is no end in sight for the discoveries.
Integral is the European Space Agency's latest orbiting gamma-ray observatory. Ever since Integral began scientific operations in 2003, the project team has been devoting a substantial proportion of its observing time to a survey of the gamma-…
There is no such thing as a free lunch, some say, but they would be wrong. In fact, the entirety of the universe defies them. According to Stanford physics Professor Andrei Linde, one of the architects of the inflationary theory, our universe (and all the matter in it) was born out of a vacuum.
"Recent developments in cosmology have irreversibly changed our understanding of the structure and fate of our universe and of our own place in it," says Linde, who will discuss the inflationary view of the universe at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on…