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    Category Astronomy/Space

    Dark Matter does Not contain certain Axion-like Particles

    April 23, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Illustration of how light is transformed into ALP by the galaxy. Credit: Credits to Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University (for the active galaxy core) and to NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring (for image of earth).

    Illustration of how light is transformed into ALP by the galaxy. Credit: Credits to Aurore Simonnet, Sonoma State University (for the active galaxy core) and to NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring (for image of earth).

    Researchers at Stockholm University are getting closer to corner light dark-matter particle models. Observations can rule out some axion-like particles in the quest for the content of dark matter.

    Physicists are still struggling with the conundrum of identifying more than 80% of the matter in the Universe. One possibility is that it is made up by extremely light particles which weigh less than a billionth of the mass of the electron. These particles are often called axion-like particles (ALPs)...

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    New Herschel maps and catalogues reveal Stellar Nurseries across the Galactic Plane

    April 23, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    New Herschel maps and catalogues reveal stellar nurseries across the Galactic Plane

    Herschel’s view of the Eagle Nebula. Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project Herschel’s view of the Galactic Plane. Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project

    ESA’s Herschel mission releases today a series of unprecedented maps of star-forming hubs in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy. This is accompanied by a set of catalogues of hundreds of thousands of compact sources that span all phases leading to the birth of stars in our Galaxy. These maps and catalogues will be valuable resources for astronomers for planning follow-up studies of particularly interesting regions in the Galactic Plane.

    New Herschel maps and catalogues reveal stellar nurseries across the Galactic Plane

    Herschel’s view of the Eagle Nebula. Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project

    During its 4 years of operations (2009-2013), the Herschel space observatory scanned the sky at far-inf...

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    Microscopic ‘Clocks’ time distance to source of Galactic Cosmic Rays

    April 22, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Vast bubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere, was formed by the explosive death of one or more of the cluster of massive stars inside the bubble. Cosmic rays reaching Earth are created and accelerated by similar explosions. Credit: Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Composite by Travis Rector of the University of Alaska Anchorage

    Vast bubble in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way visible from the Southern Hemisphere, was formed by the explosive death of one or more of the cluster of massive stars inside the bubble. Cosmic rays reaching Earth are created and accelerated by similar explosions. Credit: Gemini South Telescope in Chile. Composite by Travis Rector of the University of Alaska Anchorage

    Supernova exploded in our ‘galactic neighborhood’ within the last few million years Most of the cosmic rays arriving at Earth from our galaxy come from nearby clusters of massive stars, according to new observations from the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS), an instrument aboard NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft...

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    From bright Flare Ribbons to Coronal Rain

    April 22, 2016, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The impulsive phase of the solar flare, in which most energy is released. Credit: NJIT

    The impulsive phase of the solar flare, in which most energy is released. Panel (a) a snapshot of Hα + 1.0 Å image showing post-flare brightening associated with coronal rain. The white box marks the ROI where the brightenings occurred. Panel (b) the zoomed-in view of the ROI marked by the white box in panel (a). The slits, with different colors, mark where the brightenings’ cross-sectional width were measured. Panel (c) the pseudo Dopplergrams (with red corresponding to red shift) of the ROI. Panels (d–g) the normalized Hα + 1.0 Å intensity profiles along the slits and the Gaussian fits. For reference, the color of each profile is the same as the color of the slit (see panel b). The Gaussian FWHM and ±3σ are provided in the panels. Credit: NJIT

    High-resolution images...

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