Astronomy
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Astronomy
Moon plume breaks the record
The Galileo spacecraft has found the tallest plume seen so far on Jupiter's moon Io, the only volcanically active moon known in the solar system.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
New alcohol added to space-stuff catalog
Researchers have discovered the molecule vinyl alcohol in space.
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Astronomy
Distant spiral galaxy poses for Gemini
The newly operating Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph instrument on the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, took a high-resolution composite photograph of a galaxy 30 million light-years away.
By Ben Harder -
Astronomy
A Cosmic Crisis?
Astronomers appear to have a heavenly crisis on their hands, and it concerns material they can't even detect.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Faint body may be galaxy building block
Using a cosmic zoom lens, astronomers may have found one of the first building blocks of a galaxy in the universe.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Probe’s comet encounter yields close-ups
A crippled NASA probe successfully navigated close enough to Comet Borrelly to capture and beam home black-and-white and infared images of its nucleus and new data about ions and other particles that radiate from it.
By Ben Harder -
Astronomy
After a failure, a new craft to sail
Despite the July 20 failure of its mission to test the unfurling of a solar sail in a suborbital trajectory, the Planetary Society announced plans in late August to conduct a second test of a sail-propelled craft.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
A meteorite’s pristine origins
A rare, carbon-rich meteorite that fell into a frozen Canadian lake last year ranks as the most pristine of such specimens ever found.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Gravity’s lens: Finding a sextet of images
Astronomers have for the first time found a gravitational lens in which the image of a distant galaxy has been split into six distinct images.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Gravity’s lens: Finding a dim cluster
Relying solely on a gravitational mirage rather than visible images, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown cluster of galaxies and measured its distance from Earth.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
When Branes Collide
A controversial new theory proposes that our universe existed as a cold, featureless void for eons, until a parallel universe floating through a hidden fifth dimension crashed into it, igniting the Big Bang.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
X rays trace fierce stellar winds
A high-resolution X-ray view of the Rosette nebula, a nearby star-forming region, has revealed for the first time that the stellar winds from massive stars heat surrounding gas to a scorching 6 million kelvins.
By Ron Cowen