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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Planets like earth may have had muddy origins

    July 17, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Planets like earth may have had muddy origins

    These images show temperature maps as simulated by MAGHNUM as a result of mud convection, in a medium sized asteroid (above) and a large asteroid (below). Temperatures are shown in degrees Celcius. Credit: Planetary Science Institute

    These images show temperature maps as simulated by MAGHNUM as a result of mud convection, in a medium sized asteroid (above) and a large asteroid (below). Temperatures are shown in degrees Celcius. Credit: Planetary Science Institute

    Scientists have long held the belief that planets – including Earth – were built from rocky asteroids, but new research challenges that view. The research suggests that many of the original planetary building blocks in our solar system may actually have started life, not as rocky asteroids, but as gigantic balls of warm mud. Phil Bland, Curtin University planetary scientist, undertook the research to try and get a better insight into how smaller planets, the precursors to the larger terrestrial planets we know today, may have come about.

    Planetary Science...

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    Hubble spots a Barred Lynx Spiral

    July 16, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    NGC 2500. Credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA

    NGC 2500. Credit: ESA/Hubble/NASA

     
    Discovered by British astronomer William Herschel over 200 years ago, NGC 2500 lies about 30 million light-years away in the northern constellation of Lynx. As this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows, NGC 2500 is a particular kind of spiral galaxy known as a barred spiral, its wispy arms swirling out from a bright, elongated core.
     
    Barred spirals are actually more common than was once thought. Around two-thirds of all spiral galaxies – including the Milky Way – exhibit these straight bars cutting through their centers. These cosmic structures act as glowing nurseries for newborn stars, and funnel material towards the active core of a galaxy...
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    One of the Brightest Galaxies ever discovered

    July 16, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The multiple images of the discovered galaxy are indicated by white arrows (bottom right shows the scale of the image in seconds of arc). Credit: Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

    The multiple images of the discovered galaxy are indicated by white arrows (bottom right shows the scale of the image in seconds of arc). Credit: Hubble Space Telescope (HST)

     
    Using gravitational lensing, a team of scientists from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) has discovered a very distant galaxy, some 10 thousand million light years away, about a thousand times brighter than the Milky Way. It is the brightest of the submillimetre galaxies, called this because of their very strong emissionin the far infrared. To measure it they used the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (Garafía, La Palma).
     
    “Thanks to the gravitational lens” notes Anastasio Díaz Sánchez, a researcher at the UPCT and first author of the article ” produ...
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    Complex Gas Motion in the Centre of the Milky Way

    July 15, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Spiral galaxy Messier 61, picture taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our Milky Way might look like this galaxy. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgements: G. Chapdelaine, L. Limatola, and R. Gendler

    Spiral galaxy Messier 61, picture taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. Our Milky Way might look like this galaxy. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgements: G. Chapdelaine, L. Limatola, and R. Gendler

    How does the gas in the centre of the Milky Way behave? Researchers from Heidelberg University, in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Oxford, recently investigated the motion of gas clouds in a comprehensive computer simulation. The new model finally makes it possible to conclusively explain this complex gas motion.

    Our solar system is located in the outer regions of the Milky Way, a disk-shaped galaxy with an approximate diameter of 100,000 light years...

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