The Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey (CALIFA survey) has published a first set of data, offering views of one hundred galaxies in the local Universe at an unprecedented level of detail. This colour-magnitude diagram of 151 galaxies observed by CALIFA arranges galaxies by their colour and their brightness (magnitude). For each galaxy [continue reading]
Scientists can’t travel deep space the way Columbus sailed and charted the New World or Lewis and Clark mapped the west. But, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and two partnering institutions have found a possible way to map the spread and structure of the Universe, guided by the light of quasars. This is [continue reading]
NASA has selected a new mission, set to launch in 2016, that will take the first look into the deep interior of Mars to see why the Red Planet evolved so differently from Earth as one of our Solar System’s rocky planets. Mars, the “Red Planet”. Image Credit: NASA The new mission, named InSight, [continue reading]
A researcher at The Open University in the UK will take part in a mission to explore the chemistry of Mars when Curiosity lands on the planet. The area where NASA’s Curiosity rover will land has a geological diversity that scientists are eager to investigate, as seen in this false-color map based on data from NASA’s [continue reading]
Scientists discover a young and energetic neutron star with an unusually irregular rotation Pulsars are superlative cosmic beacons. These compact neutron stars rotate about their axes many times per second, emitting radio waves and gamma radiation into space. Using ingenious data analysis methods, researchers from the Max Planck Institutes for Gravitational Physics and [continue reading]
New observations of seismic oscillations on the Sun’s surface from NASA’s SDO mission challenge our understanding of interior solar dynamics. Pattern of convection at the surface of the Sun observed by the SDO/HMI instrument. Credit: MPS/NASA The interior motions of the Sun are much slower than predicted. Rather than moving at the speed of [continue reading]