admin

First fruits of gravity probe

  1 October 2009 The European Space Agency’s most sophisticated gravity satellite, the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE), has begun mapping Earth’s gravity in unprecedented detail. This image is the first gravity gradient map from GOCE data that ESA has released. Launched on 17 March, GOCE has been through three months of …

First fruits of gravity probe Read More »

Eruption reveals dead star

  Illustration of a magnetar. Magnetars are the most intensely magnetised objects in the Universe. (Nasa/Esa) Paris – An enormous eruption has found its way to Earth after travelling for many thousands of years across space. Studying this blast with Esa’s XMM-Newton and Integral space observatories, astronomers have discovered a dead star belonging to a …

Eruption reveals dead star Read More »

Eclipse darkens ‘Death Star’ moon

Video: Saturn moon eclipses neighbour The Cassini probe has caught its first glimpse of one Saturn moon eclipsing another, as the moon Enceladus passed in front of its neighbour Mimas. Most of Saturn’s moons orbit in the same plane as its rings, along the planet’s equator. This arrangement creates frequent alignments, but eclipses are rare …

Eclipse darkens ‘Death Star’ moon Read More »

Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way

Radio telescopes detect a large cloud of hydrogen gas (contour lines) where no stars can be found (Image: R Minchin/Arecibo Observatory/Cardiff U/Isaac Newton Telescope/WSRT)   Neutral hydrogen gas streams between NGC 4254 (top left) and the dark galaxy VIRGOH121 (centre right) in this radio image. The new study suggests VIRGOHI21’s gravity is responsible for NGC …

Dark galaxy crashing into the Milky Way Read More »

Dark energy may be bending the universe out of shape – New Scientist Magazine

29 July 2009 by Pedro Ferreira Magazine issue 2719. Subscribe and get 4 free issues. WE LIVE in a special time. For the past two decades, most of my colleagues and I have been working under the assumption that we can know everything about the universe. We know the amount of matter and energy it …

Dark energy may be bending the universe out of shape – New Scientist Magazine Read More »