 |
|
| Don't have an account yet? You can create one. As a registered user you have some advantages like theme manager, comments configuration and post comments with your name. |
|
|
|
|
|
There are currently, 11 guest(s) and 0 member(s) that are online.
You are Anonymous user. You can register for free by clicking here |
|
|
|
| |
 |
|
Planet hunters find new solar systems
|
|  |
|
| Posted by admin on Thursday, May 31 @ 00:00:00 SGT (1397 reads) |
|
|
|
|
Planet-seekers who have spotted 28 new planets orbiting other stars in the past year say earth's solar system is far from unique and there could be billions of habitable planets. The most recent planet discoveries bring the number of known exoplanets - planets outside our solar system - to 236, the researchers told a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu on Monday. "We are beginning to see that our home is not a rarity in the universe," said Geoffrey Marcy, a professor of astronomy at the University of California Berkeley, who led the team.
"We are easily able to detect giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn around other stars. Most orbit far from the star like our own Jupiter and Saturn orbit from the sun," Marcy said in a telephone interview. "It's a common structure among planetary systems." New techniques allow astronomers to detect planets that are not enormous although earth-sized objects cannot yet be seen, said the researchers, who have posted details of their findings on the internet at http://exoplanets.org. Four of the systems also have multiple planets, like earth's own with its sun, eight planets (Pluto was demoted from planet status) and smaller orbiting objects. |
|
|
|
|
|
First Map of an Extrasolar Planet
|
| |
|
| Posted by admin on Friday, May 11 @ 09:40:35 SGT (1410 reads) |
|
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, May 9, 2007: Source: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
 For the first time, astronomers have created a rough map of a planet orbiting a distant sun-like star, employing a technique that may one day enable mapping of Earth-like worlds. Since the planet just charted is a gas giant and lacks a solid surface, the map shows cloud-top features. Using the Spitzer infrared space telescope, astronomers detected a bright hot spot that is offset from "high noon," where heating is greatest.
"We are getting our first good look at a completely alien world," said Heather Knutson, a graduate student at Harvard University and lead author of a paper about the research appearing in the May 10 issue of the journal Nature. "We felt a little like Galileo must have felt when he first glimpsed Jupiter through the eyepiece of his telescope," Knutson continued.
Spitzer is only capable of mapping large, hot worlds -- planets too hot for liquid water or life. However, the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope (scheduled for launch in 2013) may be able to map Earth-like worlds using the technique Knutson and her colleagues pioneered. |
|
|
|
|
|
Telescopes have detected the brightest stellar explosion ever recorded.
|
| |
|
| Posted by admin on Tuesday, May 08 @ 01:53:25 SGT (1614 reads) |
|
|
|
|
|
May 7, 2007 - From NASA
The brightest stellar explosion ever recorded may be a long-sought new type of supernova, according to observations by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. This discovery indicates that violent explosions of extremely massive stars were relatively common in the early universe, and that a similar explosion may be ready to go off in our own galaxy.
"This was a truly monstrous explosion, a hundred times more energetic than a typical supernova," says Nathan Smith of the University of California at Berkeley, who led a team of astronomers from California and the University of Texas in Austin. "That means the star that exploded might have been as massive as a star can get, about 150 times that of our sun. We've never seen that before."
Astronomers think many of the first generation of stars were this massive, and this new supernova may thus provide a rare glimpse of how the first stars died. It is unprecedented, however, to find such a massive star and witness its death. The discovery of the supernova, known as SN 2006gy, provides evidence that the death of such massive stars is fundamentally different from theoretical predictions. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
| There isn't content right now for this block. |
|
|
|
|
|
| There isn't a Biggest Story for Today, yet. |
|
|
|
|
|
| There isn't content right now for this block. |
|
|
|
|
