They wouldn't float like balloons or give you the chance to talk in high, squeaky voices, but planets with helium skies may constitute an exotic planetary class in our Milky Way galaxy. Researchers using data from NASA's ...
Astronomy
Jun 11, 2015
0
1098
There are many hazards out there, eager to disrupt and dismantle the mighty machines we send out into space. How long can they survive to perform their important missions?
Space Exploration
May 25, 2015
1
30
Astronomers have detected wildly changing temperatures on a super Earth – the first time any atmospheric variability has been observed on a rocky planet outside the solar system – and believe it could be due to huge amounts ...
Astronomy
May 5, 2015
2
1085
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 light-years away, making it one of the most distant planets known.
Astronomy
Apr 14, 2015
0
74
The distance to celestial objects is key to calculating their intrinsic properties like mass and luminosity. Distance, unfortunately, is also one of the most difficult parameters to measure. The most direct method is called ...
Astronomy
Apr 6, 2015
0
68
Using archival data from the Japan-led Suzaku X-ray satellite, astronomers have determined the pre-explosion mass of a white dwarf star that blew up thousands of years ago. The measurement strongly suggests the explosion ...
Astronomy
Apr 2, 2015
0
246
A scene of jagged fiery peaks, turbulent magma-like clouds and fiercely hot bursts of bright light. Although this may be reminiscent of a raging fire or the heart of a volcano, it actually shows a cold cosmic clump of gas, ...
Astronomy
Mar 31, 2015
1
64
Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be in the earliest phase ...
Astronomy
Mar 24, 2015
0
108
Astronomical images often look like works of art. This picture of one of our nearest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud, is certainly no exception!
Astronomy
Feb 23, 2015
0
49
Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias are studying the evolution and formation of hundreds of close galaxies and have just published new scientific images.
Astronomy
Feb 4, 2015
0
37
