Astronomy
- Astronomy
Observatory on a suicide mission
Fearing that its 9-year-old workhorse, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, could plunge uncontrollably through the atmosphere if one more of its gyroscopes fails, NASA has decided to crash the spacecraft into the Pacific Ocean in early June.
- Astronomy
Milky Way feasts on its neighbors
Three new studies reveal that Earth's home galaxy indulged in cannibalism to assemble its visible halo, the diffuse distribution of stars that surrounds the dense core and disk of the Milky Way.
- Astronomy
There’s life in the old galaxies yet
An unexpectedly large number of supermassive black holes in old galaxy clusters suggests these elderly groupings of galaxies aren't as quiescent as had been expected.
- Astronomy
Are solar eruptions triggered a loopy way?
Astronomers have identified a new solar mechanism that may explain some coronal mass ejections.
- Astronomy
Black holes and their galaxies: A closer link
Supermassive black holes and the galaxies they inhabit appear to grow up together.
- Astronomy
Big Bang Confirmed: Seeing twists and turns of primordial light
The latest observations of the cosmic microwave background reveal that photons from adjacent patches of the sky have slightly different polarizations.
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- Astronomy
Found: Gamma-ray background information
Resolving a 30-year-old mystery, astronomers say they have identified the source of the faint, high-energy glow of radiation known as the gamma-ray background.
- Astronomy
X-ray telescope vanishes
Astro-E, a Japanese X-ray observatory, fell back to Earth and burned up just after launch on Feb. 9.
- Astronomy
Craft spies new class of gamma-ray sources
Roughly half the 120 unidentified sources of high-energy gamma-ray emissions in the Milky Way—those at midgalactic latitudes—may comprise a new class of objects and originate from a belt of massive stars that lies only a few hundred light-years from the solar system.
- Astronomy
Hole in the Middle: Are midsize black holes the missing link?
Two teams of astronomers reported that they had confirmed the existence of a new class of black hole.
- Astronomy
Reflecting on the Kuiper belt
A new study suggests that at least some members of the Kuiper belt, the reservoir of comets and other frozen objects that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, reflect more sunlight and are considerably smaller than previously calculated.
