STELLAR CHEMISTRY - SKY NIGHTLY

Organic makeup of ancient meteorites sheds light on early solar system

Aug 09, 2018 (SPX)

It could also help astronomers investigate the potential habitability of other solar systems. That's according to a new study led by The University of Mancheste...

Astronomers blown away by historic stellar blast

Aug 06, 2018 (SPX)

Astronomers conclude that this is the fastest jettisoned gas ever measured from a stellar outburst that didn't result in the complete annihilation of the star. ...

Canadian telescope picks up mysterious, low-frequency fast radio burst

Aug 06, 2018 (UPI)

The unusual fast radio burst, or FRB, was originally picked up by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment, or CHIME, in late July. The novel signal w...

Astronomers Uncover New Clues to the Star That Wouldn't Die

Aug 03, 2018 (SPX)

About 170 years ago, astronomers witnessed a major outburst by Eta Carinae, one of the brightest known stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The blast unleashed almost...

Trapping light that doesn't bounce off track for faster electronics

Aug 03, 2018 (SPX)

A new protective metamaterial "cladding" prevents light from leaking out of the very curvy pathways it would travel in a computer chip. Because processing infor...

The Fading Ghost of a Long-Dead Star

Aug 03, 2018 (JPL)

A supernova "remnant" refers to the collective, leftover signs of an exploded star, or supernova. The red filaments in this image belong to a supernova remnant ...

Pair of colliding stars spill radioactive molecules into space

Aug 02, 2018 (SPX)

Approximately 348 years after this event, an international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the NOEMA (Nort...

The cosmic ray gun duel of Eta Carinae

Aug 01, 2018 (SPX)

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, hundreds of cosmic rays have pummeled through our bodies. Cosmic rays are mostly made of protons and electrons, ...

Stellar corpse reveals origin of radioactive molecules

Jul 31, 2018 (SPX)

The team, led by Tomasz Kaminski (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, USA), used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and...

Blue crystals in meteorites show that our sun went through the 'terrible twos'

Jul 31, 2018 (SPX)

"The Sun was very active in its early life - it had more eruptions and gave off a more intense stream of charged particles. I think of my son, he's three, he's ...

Colliding stars spill radioactive molecules into space

Jul 31, 2018 (SPX)

Though initially visible with the naked eye, this burst of cosmic light quickly faded and now requires powerful telescopes to see the remains of this merger: a ...

French Consortium Joins Square Kilometre Array Radio Telescope Project

Jul 30, 2018 (SPX)

Chair of the SKA Board of Directors Dr. Catherine Cesarsky shakes hands with French representative Michel Perault, marking the occasion with members of the Boar...

Enduring 'radio rebound' powered by jets from gamma-ray burst

Jul 27, 2018 (SPX)

This newborn black hole belched a fleeting yet astonishingly intense flash of gamma rays known as a gamma-ray burst (GRB) toward Earth, where it was detected by...

Researchers discover thin gap on stellar family portrait

Jul 27, 2018 (SPX)

Just as a graph can be made of people with different heights and weights, astronomers compare stars using their luminosities and temperatures. The HRD is a "fam...

First Catalog of X-ray Sources in Overlapping Observations Published

Jul 27, 2018 (SPX)

"The More Images Are Superimposed the More Details Become Visible" Since its launch end of 1999, the European X-ray satellite XMM-Newton has observed many patch...

New family photos of Mars and Saturn from Hubble

Jul 27, 2018 (SPX)

Since the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope was launched, its goal has always been to study not only distant astronomical objects, but also the planets within our...

Students Find Foundations for Massive Stars

Jul 26, 2018 (SPX)

On July 23, just two months after Calahan graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics and astronomy, the resulting research paper, "Searching for Inflow Towar...

NASA Launches X-ray Telescope on Sounding Rocket to Study Star Wreckage

Jul 26, 2018 (SPX)

"The flight time of a sounding rocket is short compared to orbiting satellites, so you have to get as much light as you can to do the science you want," said Pr...

NASA's Most Technically Complex Space Observatory Requires Precision

Jul 26, 2018 (SPX)

The entire design of the Webb telescope took years to develop and was specifically engineered to see more of the cosmos than ever before. It required hundreds o...

The Milky Way's long-lost sibling finally found

Jul 25, 2018 (SPX)

Even though it was mostly shredded, this massive galaxy left behind a rich trail of evidence: an almost invisible halo of stars larger than the Andromeda galaxy...