When in 1990 the solar probe Ulysses embarked on its 19-year-long exploration tour, the participating researchers turned their attention not only to our Sun, but also to significantly smaller research objects: interstellar ...
Astronomy
Oct 19, 2015
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114
Portrayed in this image from ESA's Planck satellite are the two Magellanic Clouds, among the nearest companions of our Milky Way galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160 000 light-years away, is the large red and orange ...
Astronomy
Sep 7, 2015
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122
Astronomers have long known that powerful cosmic winds can sometimes blow through galaxies, sweeping out interstellar material and stopping future star formation. Now they have a clearer snapshot of how it happens.
Astronomy
Jul 27, 2015
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118
A ring of dust 200 light years across and a loop covering a third of the sky: two of the results in a new map from the Planck satellite. Dr Mike Peel and Dr Paddy Leahy of the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JCBA) presented ...
Astronomy
Jul 7, 2015
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85
The space between stars is not empty—it contains a vast reservoir of diffuse material with about 5-10% of the total mass of our Milky Way galaxy. Most of the material is gas, but about 1% of this mass (quite a lot in astronomical ...
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2015
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141
The constellation of Cygnus is one of the most recognisable in the northern hemisphere. During the summer months, the stars of its long neck stretch along the Milky Way and its wings sweep from side to side.
Astronomy
May 4, 2015
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539
NASA scientists studying the origin of life have reproduced uracil, cytosine, and thymine, three key components of our hereditary material, in the laboratory. They discovered that an ice sample containing pyrimidine exposed ...
Astronomy
Mar 5, 2015
6
274
Given that our Solar System sits inside the Milky Way Galaxy, getting a clear picture of what it looks like as a whole can be quite tricky. In fact, it was not until 1852 that astronomer Stephen Alexander first postulated ...
Astronomy
Jan 14, 2015
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167
While the pastel tones and fine texture of this image may bring to mind brush strokes on an artist's canvas, they are in fact a visualisation of data from ESA's Planck satellite. The image portrays the interaction between ...
Astronomy
Dec 16, 2014
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5
This August, a consortium of 65 scientists announced in the journal Science that they have so far found seven probable but not confirmed ("level 2" ) interstellar dust specks in a collector returned to Earth by the Stardust ...
Space Exploration
Nov 6, 2014
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