| RECENT NEWS January 8 Saving the Earth with dynamical simulations A new model keeps the solar system safe for the young Earth and other infant planets by preventing them from spiraling into the sun. | Read More January 6 Gamma-ray burst may reveal some of the oldest dust in the universe WASHINGTON — Astronomers may have detected smoke signals generated by a group of supernovas that blew up when the universe was less than 1.2 billion years old. If correct, the researchers have detected what would be one of the earliest known signs of supernova-produced dust in the universe, and the earliest dust detected thanks to a gamma-ray burst. | Read More  NASA’s WISE eyes are open. After a successful launch on December 14, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer is poised to begin the most thorough survey yet of the infrared universe. The telescope’s first image, a field of about 3,000 stars in the constellation Carina, was released January 6 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society. | Read More Comets don’t all start out on the fringe WASHINGTON — A new study of fringe comets could let the outer solar system lose some weight. Simulations of the most distant objects in the solar system suggest that, counter to long-standing thinking, the comets that swing past Earth can originate in the inner region of the Oort Cloud, not just from its outer fringes. The new model could resolve a discrepancy: The amount of solid mass estimated to have been in the protoplanetary disk falls short of the amount needed to build the Oort Cloud in the first place, said Nathan Kaib of the University of Washington. Kaib presented his calculations on January 5 at the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. | Read More January 5  WASHINGTON — A new panoramic view of the universe portrays the assembly of galaxies over 12 billions years of cosmic history, depicting that buildup over a wide range of wavelengths with unprecedented sharpness and depth. The farthest galaxies in the compiled image date from a time when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was less than 1 billion years old, while the closest galaxies emitted their starlight 12 billion years later.. | Read More January 4  NASA’s planet-hunting Kepler mission is off to a precocious start. The first six weeks of observations recorded by the spacefaring telescope, combined with follow-up studies from the ground, have revealed five previously unknown extrasolar planets—one body roughly the size of Neptune and four low-density versions of Jupiter. All reside within roasting distance of their parent stars. | Read More  Plenty of black holes do-si-do WASHINGTON — The universe is one big dance party for black holes. New observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii and the Hubble Space Telescope found 33 merged galaxies in which pairs of supermassive black holes are “waltzing” around the galactic centers. | Read More  WASHINGTON—A new view of Eta Carinae, a nearby star system that is expected to explode as a supernova sometime in the next 10,000 years or so, reveals for the first time clouds of gas that were expelled by one of its stars. | Read More January 3  By pushing the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope to its very limits as a cosmic time machine, astronomers have identified three galaxies that may hail from an era only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. The faint galaxies may be the most distant starlit bodies known, each lying some 13.2 billion light-years from Earth. | Read More |
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| ON THE SCENE BLOG ENTRIES January 6 Not too soon to announce possible earliest galaxies known WASHINGTON — Ecstatic astronomers are waxing poetic about a new infrared portrait of the universe recorded by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope. And they have good reason. The image, combined with a similarly deep portrait of the same patch of sky recorded by Hubble in visible light five years earlier, reveals galaxies that are extraordinarily distant. | Read More January 5 Quip from NASA administrator Charles Bolden WASHINGTON — Newly appointed NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, during the question-and-answer portion of his policy talk January 5, offered this perspective: “If you told me in 1980, when I was a young astronaut candidate, that we wouldn’t be back on the moon today, I would have told you you were smoking dope.” | Read More |
