Tag Archives: astronomy

Until now, astrophysicists were having a lot of difficulty with galaxy simulations. These difficulties were a result of two things -- a lack of detailed information about galaxy formation, and the complexity of the features of a galaxy. Though this simulation doesn't entirely overcome these hurdles, it's definitely a step in the right direction.

Astronomers have an exciting announcement -- a planet about 600 light years away has been discovered in a "habitable zone", which means it could potentially support life. The planet has a 260-day orbit, which puts it right in the middle of the "habitable zone" around a distant star.

A little over a century ago, we were a mere 300 miles away from being completely annihilated by a pack of apocalypse-inducing comets.

Twenty quadrillion miles away, scientists have discovered a diamond orbiting a star that's only fifteen miles across, but more massive than our sun. This star is spinning over 100 times per second, and the gigantic diamond orbiting around it is around the size of the planet Jupiter.

Chilean astronomers have announced the discovery of 16 new "Super Earths", making scientists hopeful that we could make contact with extraterrestrial life in the next 15 years.

The astronomers, led by Takahiro Sumi if Osaka University in Japan, reported in the journal Nature there are hundreds of billions of planets that have been orphaned by their planetary systems. The planets have either been completely ejected out of orbit, meandering through space, or are distantly bound to their stars at a distance at least 10 times that of the Earth's distance from the Sun.

The godlike vision granted by our far-flung sensors.

A new effort of the citizen-science effort Zooniverse, the Milky Way Project brings elements of gaming and social media to astronomy.

"Just as the shadows in the hollows of the Earth diminish in size as the Sun rises higher, so also these spots on the Moon lose their blackness as the illuminated part grows larger and larger."

Pluto's loss of planetary status seemed to have been sealed by the 2006 discovery of a batch of similarly-sized planet-like objects in the same orbital neighborhood�one of which, later named Eris, was thought to be larger than erstwhile ninth planet. According to new findings, however, Pluto's diameter is larger than that of its more massive neigbhor. For now, Pluto gains in status as the largest of these so-called dwarf planets. Whether this will be enough to secure a record contract remains to be seen.