News tagged with royal astronomical society

Nomads of the galaxy

A recent study proposes the galaxy is crowded with nomad planets adrift in space. If this is the case, nomad planets may play a dynamic role in the universe.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 23, 2012 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 7

Baby galaxies grew up quickly

Baby galaxies from the young Universe more than 12 billion years ago evolved faster than previously thought, shows new research from the Niels Bohr Institute. This means that already in the early history of ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 16, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 67 | with audio podcast

Astrophysicists discover new heating source in cosmological structure formation

(Phys.org) -- So far, astrophysicists thought that super-massive black holes can only influence their immediate surroundings. A collaboration of scientists at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 15, 2012 | popularity 4.1 / 5 (11) | comments 8 | with audio podcast

How nature shapes the birth of stars

(Phys.org) -- Using state of the art computer simulations, a team of astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have found the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends on their birth ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 11, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 6 | with audio podcast

Ultra-cool companion helps reveal giant planets

(Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created May 10, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (6) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Spitzer finds galaxy with split personality

(Phys.org) -- While some galaxies are rotund and others are slender disks like our spiral Milky Way, new observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show that the Sombrero galaxy is both. The galaxy, ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 25, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (3) | comments 11 | with audio podcast

Cosmic 'leaf blower' robs galaxy of star-making fuel

(PhysOrg.com) -- Supernova explosions and the jets of a monstrous black hole are scattering a galaxy's star-making gas like a cosmic leaf blower, a new study finds. The findings, which relied on ultraviolet ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Apr 04, 2012 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

The stellar superhighway in the Milky Way

Conventional wisdom suggests that, like planets round the Sun, stars follow approximately circular orbits which cross the spiral arms, and that the Sun presently lies in a spur rather than a major spiral arm.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 21, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (11) | comments 1

Citizen scientists reveal a bubbly Milky Way

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of volunteers has pored over observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and discovered more than 5,000 "bubbles" in the disk of our Milky Way galaxy. Young, hot stars blow these ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Mar 07, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (5) | comments 25 | with audio podcast

Andromeda galaxy pops up ultraluminous X-ray sources

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, Swift Gamma-ray Burst Explorer and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton Observatory have been studying an object ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 27, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (3) | comments 0

Researchers say galaxy may swarm with 'nomad planets'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Our galaxy may be awash in homeless planets, wandering through space instead of orbiting a star.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 23, 2012 | popularity 4.3 / 5 (23) | comments 31 | with audio podcast

Spectacularly bright object in Andromeda caused by 'normal' black hole

(PhysOrg.com) -- A spectacularly bright object recently spotted in one of the Milky Way's neighbouring galaxies is the result of a "normal" stellar black hole, astronomers have found.

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 23, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (8) | comments 5 | with audio podcast

Spitzer finds solid buckyballs in space

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have, for the first time, discovered buckyballs in a solid form in space. Prior to this discovery, the microscopic carbon spheres ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 22, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (15) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

The survivors of a 13 billion year old massacre

(PhysOrg.com) -- Our Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by some 200 compact groups of stars, containing up to a million stars each. At 13 billion years of age, these globular clusters are almost as old as the ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 14, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (8) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Chandra finds Milky Way's black hole grazing on asteroids

(PhysOrg.com) -- The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way may be vaporizing and devouring asteroids, which could explain the frequent flares observed, according to astronomers using data from NASA's ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Feb 08, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (8) | comments 14 | with audio podcast