Category Astronomy/Space

Prof Massimiliano Vasile

A Professor at the University of Strathclyde has had his name written among the stars, after an asteroid was named after him. Professor Massimiliano Vasile, who actively works on finding solutions to control the motion of asteroids, has received the honour from the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in recognition of his work. Professor Vasile said: “There are several hundreds of thousands of asteroids in space. Out of these relatively few are known, and even fewer are actively tracked.

“In honour of my work on asteroid manipulation, SpaceDyS, one of the partners in the Stardust network, submitted my candidacy to the Minor Planet Centre to name an asteroid after me...

Reionization as illustrated by data from the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes. Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Scientists can explain why the universe has enough energy to become transparent. The study marks the first quantitative study of how the gas content within galaxies scales with the amount of interstellar dust. This analysis shows that the gas in galaxies is like a “picket fence,” where some parts of the galaxy have little gas and are directly visible, whereas other parts have lots of gas and are effectively opaque to ionizing radiation. The ionization of hydrogen is important because of its effects on how galaxies grow and evolve...

An international team of astronomers using Hubble have been able to study stellar evolution in real time. Over a period of 30 years dramatic increases in the temperature of the star SAO 244567 have been observed. Now the star is cooling again, having been reborn into an earlier phase of stellar evolution. This makes it the first reborn star to have been observed during both the heating and cooling stages of rebirth.

An international team using Hubble have studied stellar evolution in real time. Over 30 years dramatic increases in the temperature of the star SAO 244567 have been observed. Now the star is cooling again, having been reborn into an earlier phase of stellar evolution...

An artist’s rendering (not to scale) of a cross-section of the magnetosphere, with the solar wind on the left in yellow and magnetic field lines emanating from the Earth in blue. The five THEMIS probes were well-positioned to directly observe one particular magnetic field line as it oscillated back and forth roughly every six minutes. In this unstable environment, electrons in near-Earth space, depicted as white dots, stream rapidly down magnetic field lines towards Earth’s poles. There, they interact with oxygen and nitrogen particles in the upper atmosphere, releasing photons and brightening a specific region of the aurora. Credit: Emmanuel Masongsong/UCLA EPSS/NASA

For the first time, scientists have directly mapped Earth’s fluctuating magnetic field and resulting electrical currents to...