Category Astronomy/Space

Left: Image of the Whirlpool galaxy and NGC 5195. Credit: Jon Christensen. Right: False colour image of NGC 5195 created by combining the VLA 20 cm radio image (red), the Chandra X-ray image (green), and the Hubble Space telescope H-alpha image (blue). The image shows the X-ray and H-alpha arcs, as well as the radio outflows from the supermassive black hole at the centre of NGC 5195. Credits: NRAO / AUI / NSF / NASA / CXC / NASA / ESA / STScI / U. Manchester / Rampadarath et al. Right inset: e-MERLIN maps of the nuclear region of NGC 5195 at 1.4 GHz (left) and 5 GHz (right). The images display a partially resolved source with possible parsec-scale outflows. Credit: e-MERLIN / U. Manchester / Rampadarath et al. Click for a larger image

A multi-wavelength study of a pair of colliding galaxie...

The sample here contains hundreds of thousands of nanoparticles that manipulate the incoming light. Credit: Stuart Hay, ANUy

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have designed a new nano material that can reflect or transmit light on demand with temperature control, opening the door to technology that protects astronauts in space from harmful radiation. Dr Mohsen Rahmani from ANU said the material was so thin that hundreds of layers could fit on the tip of a needle and could be applied to any surface, including spacesuits.

“Our invention has a lot of potential applications, such as protecting astronauts or satellites with an ultra-thin film that can be adjusted to reflect various dangerous ultraviolet or infrared radiation in different environments,” said Dr Rahmani, an A...

Artist’s impression of HD189733b, showing the planet’s atmosphere being stripped by the radiation from its parent star. Credit: Ron Miller

New models of massive stellar eruptions hint at an extra layer of complexity when considering whether an exoplanet may be habitable or not. Models developed for our own Sun have now been applied to cool stars favoured by exoplanet hunters, in research presented by Dr Christina Kay, of the NASA Goddard Flight Center, on Monday 3rd July at the National Astronomy Meeting at the University of Hull.

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are huge explosions of plasma and magnetic field that routinely erupt from the Sun and other stars...

A cutout of the map of M81’s stellar halo in resolved RGB stars (Smercina et al. 2017, in preparation). The colors correspond to the metallicity bins defined on the CMD in the top left figure. The known galaxies in the field are labeled. d1005+68 is located at the bottom left of the map, indicated by a black arrow. It appears as a significant overdensity of blue (metal-poor) RGB stars, very near to the dwarf spheroidal, BK5N. Credit: Smercina et al., 2017.

Astronomers have detected a new faint dwarf spheroidal galaxy using Japan’s Subaru Telescope located in Hawaii. The newly found dwarf, designated d1005+68, belongs to a nearby galaxy group known as the M81 Group. Dwarf galaxies are small galaxies composed of about 100 million up to several billion stars...