Astronomy

  1. Astronomy

    Hubble Highlights a Riddle: What’s the source of quick-return comets?

    New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope demonstrate that scientists don't know where a major class of comets comes from.

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  2. Astronomy

    Stellar Tantrums: Tracking the flaring cycles of other stars

    Astronomers are closely tracking the ebb and flow of magnetic activity and powerful flares on stars other than the sun.

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  3. Astronomy

    Black Hole Life Preserver: Don’t get sucked in without one

    By temporarily counteracting a black hole's tremendous tidal forces, a proposed black hole life preserver would slightly lengthen the life and shorten the agony of anyone exploring one of these gravitational beasts.

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  4. Astronomy

    Ulysses makes a return trip

    Just as the sun has reached the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has begun its second and final pass over the sun's poles.

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  5. Astronomy

    Magnetic-mapping mission resurrected

    The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere.

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  6. Astronomy

    Spirograph in the sky

    Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern.

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  7. Astronomy

    It’s Raining Stardust: Spacecraft measures record amount of stellar debris

    Stardust is sneaking into our solar system at three times the rate that it had just 4 years ago, and the influx of dust could triple through 2010.

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  8. Astronomy

    Stellar speed limit

    Ripples in the fabric of space-time may put the brakes on the fastest-spinning stars in the universe and prevent them from flying apart.

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  9. Astronomy

    Swallow Thy Neighbor: Strong evidence of galactic cannibalism

    Astronomers have found a compelling case of a large galaxy caught in the act of eating a small fry.

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  10. Astronomy

    Repulsive Astronomy: Strengthening the case for dark energy

    Astronomers have found new evidence that a mysterious substance, dubbed dark energy, is ripping the cosmos apart, causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster rate.

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  11. Astronomy

    Taking the Crab’s pulse

    Simultaneous recordings of a pulsar's radio emissions and its visible beam shed new light on the seemingly chaotic variations in the intensities of those emissions.

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  12. Astronomy

    Sky Prospecting: Surveying the universe’s middle-aged galaxies

    With a new sky survey, astronomers can tell the story of what happened during the universe’s middle years—about 7 billion years ago.

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