Check out this cool video comparing the size of some of the largest known stars and planets in the universe. continue reading...
The Hubble Space Telescope was launched on 24 April, 1990. This tool, built as a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, is one of humanity’s most important tools in discovering the Universe. Since its start, it has shown us distant galaxies, nebulae, and has even given us a clear idea of the Earth’s age. It has answered some of the most lingering questions in astronomy, and is helping us discover whether life exists outside our planet. In this video, WatchMojo.com takes a look at some of the Hubble’s most notable and extraordinary discoveries. continue reading...
In this video WatchMojo.com speaks with Louie Bernstein about Galileo’s first discoveries and how it changed our understanding of the sky. continue reading...
A computer simulation shows the final stage of a starmaking cloud as it falls toward a supermassive black hole. A portion of the cloud formed a disk around the black hole, which quickly fragmented to form 198 abnormally large stars.
An August 2008 paper describing the results of the simulation suggests that such a process could explain two unusual populations of big, young stars near the black hole at the center of the Milky Way. continue reading...
Scientists have peered through a thick shroud of interstellar dust to reveal the youngest supernova ever seen in the Milky Way.Stephen Reynolds, an astrophysicist at North Carolina State University, and his team suspected that supernova G1.9+0.3 was very young.
So they compared 2007 images of the object from NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory with radio observations from the mid-1980s—and their suspicions were confirmed. continue reading...
Images shot last summer by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft provide the strongest evidence yet that Titan, a saturnian moon and one of the most Earth-like celestial bodies in the solar system, is dotted with a multitude of liquid lakes.
“At the time we first announced it, we were like, ‘Well, we think these are probably lakes,’ but that was about our level of confidence,” said study team member Ellen Stofan of University College London and Caltech. “I would say at this point, we’ve analyzed the data to the extent that we feel very confident that they are liquid-filled lakes.” continue reading...
No need to hold your breath, but this does suggest what will happen when our solar system fades away:
A debris disk spied recently around a distant dead star is likely the remains of an asteroid that was vaporized when the star died, scientists say. continue reading...
