(PhysOrg.com) -- To find a binary star system, which is where two stars are in close proximity to one another, astronomers have traditionally relied on pure luck. They’d first start studying what would look like a single ...
Jan 13, 2012
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Since 2000, the three Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS I, II, III) have surveyed well over a quarter of the night sky and produced the biggest color map of the universe in three dimensions ever. Now scientists ...
Jan 11, 2012
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Using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems -- planets that orbit two stars. This work establishes that such ...
Jan 11, 2012
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Last year's discovery of the nearest Type Ia supernova in decades – captured only 11 hours after it exploded – allowed astronomers to finally cinch the identity of the stars behind these explosions, which have become ...
Jan 11, 2012
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A team of astronomers in Pitt's Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences announced today the most accurate determination yet of the color of the (aptly named) Milky Way Galaxy: "a very pure white, almost ...
Jan 11, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology ...
Jan 10, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development, making it the most distant such grouping ever observed in ...
Jan 10, 2012
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(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, astronomers have mapped dark matter on the largest scale ever observed. The results, presented by Dr Catherine Heymans of the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, and Associate ...
Jan 09, 2012
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Two Earth-sized planets have been discovered circling a dying star that has passed the red giant stage. Because of their close orbits, the planets must have been engulfed by their star while it swelled up ...
Dec 21, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- NASA's Kepler mission has discovered the first Earth-size planets orbiting a sun-like star outside our solar system. The planets, called Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, are too close to their star ...
Dec 20, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- An international team of astronomers has identified a candidate for the smallest-known black hole using data from NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE). The evidence comes from a specific ...
Dec 15, 2011
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Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia's) are the extraordinarily bright and remarkably similar "standard candles" astronomers use to measure cosmic growth, a technique that in 1998 led to the discovery of dark energy ...
Dec 14, 2011
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The normally quiet neighborhood around the massive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy is being invaded by a gas cloud that is destined in just a few years to be ripped, shredded and largely eaten.
Dec 14, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- In early November 1572, observers on Earth witnessed the appearance of a "new star" in the constellation Cassiopeia, an event now recognized as the brightest naked-eye supernova in more than ...
Dec 13, 2011
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology have discovered what caused the rapid growth of early supermassive black holes — a steady ...
Dec 12, 2011
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