Heavens

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered something odd about a distant planet called GJ 436b; it lacks methane, an ingredient common to many of the planets in our solar system.

GJ 436b is located 33 light-years away in the constellation Leo, the Lion. It rides in a tight, 2.64-day orbit around its small star, an "M-dwarf" much cooler than our sun. The planet transits, or crosses in front of, its star as viewed from Earth.

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing a special feature this week dedicated to the new results obtained with AKARI, the first Japanese infrared satellite. AKARI is a project of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with the participation of the European Space Agency (ESA). It was launched in February 2006. It is equipped with a 68.5 cm cooled telescope and two instruments: the infrared camera (1.8-26 mic) and the far-infrared surveyor (50-180 mic). AKARI surveyed the whole sky in six infrared bands from May 2006 to August 2007.

Using a CSIRO radio telescope, an international team of researchers has caught an enormous cloud of cosmic gas and dust in the process of collapsing in on itself – a discovery which could help solve one of astronomy's enduring conundrums: 'How do massive stars form?'

Dr Peter Barnes from the University of Florida says astronomers have a good grasp of how stars such as our Sun form from clouds of gas and dust, but for heavier stars – ten times the mass of the Sun or more – they are still largely in the dark, despite years of work.

An international team of astrophysicists has just unveiled the most complete atlas of nuclear rings, enormous star-forming ring-shaped regions that circle certain galactic nuclei. The catalogue, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, includes 113 such rings in 107 galaxies.

The first-ever discovery of ice and organic molecules on an asteroid may hold clues to the origins of Earth's oceans and life 4 billion years ago.

University of Central Florida researchers detected a thin layer of water ice and organic molecules on the surface of 24 Themis, the largest in a family of asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter.

Their unexpected findings will be published Thursday, April 29 in Nature, which will featuretwo complementary articles by the UCF-led team and by another team of planetary scientists.

KNOXVILLE -- Asteroids may not be the dark, dry, lifeless chunks of rock scientists have long thought.

Josh Emery, research assistant professor with the earth and planetary sciences department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has found evidence of water ice and organic material on the asteroid 24 Themis. This evidence supports the idea that asteroids could be responsible for bringing water and organic material to Earth.

The findings are detailed in the April 29 issue of the journal "Nature."

Bacteria common to spacecraft may be able to survive the harsh environs of Mars long enough to inadvertently contaminate Mars with terrestrial life according to research published in the April 2010 issue of the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology.

The search for life on Mars remains a stated goal of NASA's Mars Exploration Program and Astrobiology Institutes. To preserve the pristine environments, the bioloads on spacecraft headed to Mars are subject to sterilization designed to prevent the contamination of the Martian surface.

Just seeing someone who looks sick is enough to make your immune system work harder, according to a new study in which volunteers looked at pictures of sick people. This may help fight off pathogens, says Mark Schaller from the University of British Columbia who conducted the research. "It seems like it's probably good for the immune system to be responding especially aggressively at times when it looks like you are likely to be coming into contact with something that might make you sick."

A significant proportion of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients treated with cognitive behavior therapy have a positive response within four weeks of treatment, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

A significant proportion of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) patients treated with cognitive behavior therapy have a positive response within four weeks of treatment, according to a new study in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Institute.

WASHINGTON, April 26—New devices that concentrate the sun's rays, increase the efficiency of solar cells, and help to lower the cost of solar energy, are featured in the inaugural issue of Energy Express, a new special bi-monthly supplement to Optics Express, the open-access journal of the Optical Society (OSA). Edited by Bernard Kippelen of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Energy Express launches today and will focus on research that encompasses the science and engineering of light and its impact on sustainable energy development, the environment, and green technologies.

New images from ESA's Planck space observatory reveal the forces driving star formation and give astronomers a way to understand the complex physics that shape the dust and gas in our Galaxy.

Star formation takes place hidden behind veils of dust but that doesn't mean we can't see through them. Where optical telescopes see only black space, Planck's microwave eyes reveal myriad glowing structures of dust and gas. Now, Planck has used this ability to probe two relatively nearby star-forming regions in our Galaxy.