Star clusters are among the pretties things you can see, when it comes to astrophysical observations. Recently, ESO provided some amazing pictures of one of the most beautiful nestles ever to be seen, located deep in the constellation of Crux.
The cluster is named Kappa Crucis Cluster and has been nicknamed ‘the jewel box’ (by Herschel, [...]
We’ve all seen at least one movie in which our planet is destroyed, but most of them were quite repetitive and kind of uninteresting. Our planet deserves so much more!
Black holes
Well, it seems the more we understand things about black holes, the more we find out things we don’t know, and the more we fear [...]
Ram pressure is the pressure exerted on a body when it passes through a fluid medium; this causes a drag force that is exerted on the body. The same pressure appears when a galaxy is moving through an intergalactic gas, and in this case, the ram pressure can sweep a significant part of the intergalactic [...]
Stormy weather conditions may delay the launch of space shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled for liftoff on Saturday, July 11. This comes on the heels of two delays last month caused by a hydrogen gas leak. A similar problem delayed the launch of space shuttle Discovery in March.
The 16-day mission will feature a number of spacewalks [...]
Unfortunately for some, the green visitor is not an alien coming to greet us but something else, even though it also comes from far, far away. On the 24th of February the comet Lulin will pass within 61 million kilometers of Earth, thus being able to be seen with the naked eye from some locations.
This [...]
As we learn (or at least should) at quite an early age, Galileo Galilei made numerous improvements in telescopes and made early observations of the Moon, making the first map of our planet’s satellite. Right? Wrong. Despite the fact that he will always remain “father of modern observational astronomy” and his name will be forever [...]
Recently, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered no more, no less than 12 pulsars, and it also detected gamma ray pulse from 18 others. These findings are forcing scientists to rethink what we know about dying stars, as they totally underestimated the power of these stellar cilinders.
“We know of 1,800 pulsars, but until Fermi we [...]
After more than 400 years, science-enthusiasts and not only can finally pay a tribute to the man who revolutionized people’s perception of the Universe. After having analyzed DNA taken from two strands of hair and a tooth, scientists finally concluded that the remains found in Frombrok Cathedral in Poland are, in fact, the ones of [...]
Despite the fact that they have worked round the clock for fixing Hubble, it seems NASA engineers have once again hit a snag and they’re currently trying to figure out what is the next step. The telescope stopped sending pictures three weeks ago, and at first it was believed that it wouldn’t take that long [...]
Using the RHESSI spacecraft, scientists managed to calculate the Sun’s roundness with a level of precision that surpasses anything of this type that has been attempted before. They found that the star which the Eart rotates around is not quite a sphere, but it has a thin “cantaloupe skin”.
This skin causes the equatorial radius to [...]
Friday, October 30, 2009
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