Cluster MACS J1206.2-0847 (or MACS 1206 for short) is one of the first targets in a Hubble survey that will allow astronomers to construct the highly detailed dark matter maps of more galaxy clusters than ever before. These maps are being used to test previous but surprising results that suggest that dark matter is more densely packed inside clusters than some models predict. This might mean that galaxy cluster assembly began earlier than commonly thought.
Heavens
PASADENA, Calif.—Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have directly determined the surface temperature of early Mars for the first time, providing evidence that's consistent with a warmer and wetter Martian past.
Tropical Storm Irwin almost appeared down for the count, but spotty areas of flaring convection provided a clue to forecasters that he wasn't ready to give up yet. The cloud top temperatures were measured by a NASA instrument at a frigid -112 Fahrenheit, indicating they're very high and powerful.
ANN ARBOR, Mich.---The space between the galaxies wasn't always transparent. In the earliest times, it was an opaque, dense fog. How it cleared is an important question in astronomy. New observational evidence from the University of Michigan shows how high energy light from massive stars could have been responsible.
Mention prime geography for generation of solar energy, and people tend to think of hot deserts. But a new study concludes that some of the world's coldest landscapes -- including the Himalaya Mountains, the Andes, and even Antarctica -- could become Saudi Arabias of solar. The research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Boulder, CO, USA - One of the supposedly best understood and least interesting landscapes on Mars is hiding something that could rewrite the planet's history. Or not. In fact, about all that is certain is that decades of assumptions regarding the wide, flat Hesperia Planum are not holding up very well under renewed scrutiny with higher-resolution, more recent spacecraft data.
An international team of astronomers used the VLT as a time machine, to look back into the early Universe and observe several of the most distant galaxies ever detected. They have been able to measure their distances accurately and find that we are seeing them as they were between 780 million and a billion years after the Big Bang [1].
Several NASA satellites have been following Hurricane Jova since birth and over the last day, Jova's eye has "winked" at them.
Satellite imagery from NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites have shown that Jova's eye was only sometimes visible and other times appeared cloud covered, making it appear as Jova "winking." Other satellites, such as NOAA's GOES-11 satellite captured Jova's "winks."
Tropical Storm Banyan's center may still be at sea, but NASA satellite data today shows the western edge of the storm already over the southern Philippines.
Banyan strengthened overnight into a tropical storm. It was born yesterday, Oct. 10, 2011 as Tropical Depression 23W. The Philippines have also given Banyan a name, and call it Ramon.
Supermassive black holes millions to billions times the mass of our Sun lie at the heart of most, maybe all large galaxies. Some of these power brilliantly luminous, rapidly growing objects called active galactic nuclei that gather and condense enormous quantities of dust, gas and stars.
Because astronomers had seen these objects primarily in the oldest, most massive galaxies that glow with the red light of aging stars, many thought active galactic nuclei might help to bring an end to the formation of new stars, though the evidence was always circumstantial.
Pulsars--highly magnetized, rotating stars--were first discovered more than 40 years ago, and are now believed to be a type of stellar leftover, or remnant--in this case, a neutron star--that results from the explosion and gravitational collapse of a more massive star.
TORONTO, ON – A University of Toronto-led team of astronomers has discovered over two dozen new free-floating brown dwarfs, including a lightweight youngster only about six times heftier than Jupiter, that reside in two young star clusters. What's more, one cluster contains a surprising surplus of them, harbouring half as many of these astronomical oddballs as normal stars.
The scope and intensity of mercury pollution in the Great Lakes region is much greater than previously reported, but additional mercury controls should bring needed improvement, according to a new summary of scientific research on the subject.
In the particle identification business, two pieces of information are vital: energy and spatial location. By measuring its energy you can work out the mass of your mystery particle. From its spatial location on the surface of a detector, you can work out where the particle came from – and therefore how big the event was that produced the particle in the first place.
Astrophysicists have found evidence of black holes destroying stars, a long-sought phenomenon that provides a new window into general relativity. The research, reported in the latest issue of the Astrophysical Journal, also opens up a method to search for the possible existence of a large population of presently undetectable "intermediate mass" black holes which are hypothesized to be precursors to the super-massive black holes at the centers of most large galaxies.