Category Astronomy/Space

This is an artist’s illustration of the epsilon Eridani system showing Epsilon Eridani b, right foreground, a Jupiter-mass planet orbiting its parent star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our solar system’s Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our solar system is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our sun. SOFIA observations confirmed the existence of the asteroid belt adjacent to the orbit of the Jovian planet. Credit: Illustration by NASA/SOFIA/Lynette Cook

NASA’s SOFIA aircraft, a 747 loaded with a 2...

An excess of gamma-rays coming from the center of the Milky Way is likely due to a population of rapidly spinning, very dense and highly magnetized neutron stars, called pulsars. Credit: NASA/CXC/University of Massachusetts/D. Wang et al.; Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

A mysterious gamma-ray glow at the center of the Milky Way is most likely caused by pulsars – the incredibly dense, rapidly spinning cores of collapsed ancient stars that were up to 30 times more massive than the sun. That’s the conclusion of a new analysis by an international team including researchers from the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is shown diving through the gap between Saturn and its rings in this artist’s depiction. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

As Cassini spacecraft prepares to shoot the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings for the second time in its Grand Finale, Cassini engineers are delighted, while ring scientists are puzzled, that the region appears to be relatively dust-free. This assessment is based on data Cassini collected during its first dive through the region on April 26. With this information in hand, the Cassini team will now move forward with its preferred plan of science observations. “The region between the rings and Saturn is ‘the big empty,’ apparently,” said Cassini Project Manager Earl Maize of NASA’s JPL in Pasadena, California...

An image of the colliding galaxies known as The Antennae, taken in the optical and near-infrared. Astronomers using the ALMA submillimeter array have found evidence for shocked gas near the nucleus of the northern (upper) galaxy, and argue that it is due to material infalling onto the nuclear region. Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Collisions between galaxies, especially ones rich in molecular gas, can trigger bursts of star formation that heat the dust and result in their shining brightly in the infrared. Astronomers think that there is also significant gas inflowing to the central regions of galaxies that can stimulate starburst activity. Inflowing gas, as it collides with the gas in the inner regions, should produce powerful shocks that should make the gas itself glow...