Wednesday 19 June, 2013
Science > > Astrophysics

Discovery of a Blue Supergiant Star Born in the Wild

Psudo-color GALEX ultraviolet image of the galaxy IC 3418 falling into the Virgo cluster. Notice the young star-forming clumps in its 55,000 light-years-long trail, as the galaxy moves towards the top-right area. Zooming into one of the blobs, marked by the arrow, the colour optical image from CFHT shows the bright blue supergiant star in the middle of the inset image in the top-left area. The optical spectrum from the same star (bottom-right area), which was obtained by Subaru Telescope's Faint Object Camera and Spectrograph (FOCAS), shows only one bright red emission line (H-alpha) due to the stellar wind and none of the other usual signs of star-forming regions. (Credit: NAOJ, CFHT, GALEX, Y. Ohyama & A. Hota)

A duo of astronomers, Dr. Youichi Ohyama (Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica, Taiwan) and Continue reading “Discovery of a Blue Supergiant Star Born in the Wild” »  More...

by BioNews | Published 66 days ago
The jet known as ‘PKS 0637-752’ as seen by the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in New South Wales, Australia clearly showing the shock diamond-like shapes in the two million light year long structure. Image Credit: Dr Leith Godfrey, ICRAR and Dr Jim Lovell, UTAS.
By BioNews On Tuesday, October 23rd, 2012
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Astronomers study two million light year ‘extragalactic afterburner’

Blasting over two million lights years from the centre of a distant galaxy Continue reading “Astronomers study two million light year ‘extragalactic afterburner’” »  More...

crshower2_nasa
By BioNews On Wednesday, October 17th, 2012
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New type of cosmic ray discovered after 100 years

Using the European X-ray astronomy satellite XMM-Newton, researchers from CNRS and CEA Continue reading “New type of cosmic ray discovered after 100 years” »  More...

water vapor
By ANI On Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
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Water vapour equal to 2,000 times Earth’s oceans detected in `star forming` cloud

Researchers at the ESA’s Herschel space observatory have spotted enough water vapour Continue reading “Water vapour equal to 2,000 times Earth’s oceans detected in `star forming` cloud” »  More...

A visual impression of the data used in the study. The relevant extra-galactic maps are represented as shells of increasing distance from Earth from left to right. The closest thing seen is our Milky Way galaxy, which is a potential source of noise for the analysis. After this are six shells containing maps of the millions of distant galaxies used in the study. These maps are produced using different telescopes in different wavelengths and are colour-coded to show denser clumps of galaxies as red and under-dense regions as blue. The last, largest shell shows the temperature of the cosmic microwave background from the WMAP satellite (red is hot, blue is cold), which is the most distant image of the Universe seen, some 46 billion light-years away. The team have detected (at 99.996% significance) very small correlations between these foreground maps (on the left) and the cosmic microwave background (on the right). Credits: Earth: NASA/BlueEarth; Milky Way: ESO/S. Brunier; CMB: NASA/WMAP
By BioNews On Wednesday, September 12th, 2012
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Dark energy is real, say Portsmouth astronomers

Dark energy, a mysterious substance thought to be speeding up the expansion of the Universe is really there Continue reading “Dark energy is real, say Portsmouth astronomers” »  More...