A team of astronomers led by Jose Dias do Nascimento (Department of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [DFTE, UFRN], Brazil) has found the farthest known solar twin in the Milky Way Galaxy, CoRoT Sol 1, which has about the same mass and chemical composition as the Sun. Figure [continue reading]
May 20, 2013 NGC 7354, a small planetary nebula in Cepheus Image Credit: Bruno Conti, ESA/Hubble & NASA NGC 7354 is a small, relatively bright planetary nebula of about half a light-year across, located about 4,200 light-years away from Earth in the northern constellation of Cepheus (named after Cepheus, King of Aethiopia in Greek mythology). [continue reading]
ESA’s Herschel space observatory has discovered an extremely distant galaxy making stars more than 2000 times faster than our own Milky Way. Seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old, its mere existence challenges our theories of galaxy evolution. Artist’s impression of starburst galaxy HFLS3. The galaxy appears [continue reading]
May 19, 2013 NGC 3256, a distorted spiral galaxy in Vela Image Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) NGC 3256 is a very bright, distorted spiral galaxy of more than 100,000 light-years across, located about 100 million light-years away from Earth in the [continue reading]
For the past 8 years, NASA astronomers have been monitoring the Moon for signs of explosions caused by meteoroids hitting the lunar surface. “Lunar meteor showers” have turned out to be more common than anyone expected, with hundreds of detectable impacts occurring every year. They’ve just seen the biggest explosion in the history of the [continue reading]
May 18, 2013 N44C, an emission nebula in the LMC Image Credit: Donald Garnett (University of Arizona) et al., Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and NASA N44C is an emission nebula of about 125 light-years across in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion galaxy to our own Milky Way which lies about 157,000 light-years away [continue reading]