lanck spots hot gas bridging galaxy cluster pair

Galaxy clusters connected by gas bridge ESA’s Planck space telescope has made the first conclusive detection of a bridge of hot gas connecting a pair of galaxy clusters across 10 million light-years of intergalactic space. Planck’s primary task is to capture the most ancient light of the cosmos, the Cosmic Microwave Background, or CMB. As this faint light traverses the Universe,...

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Born-again star foreshadows fate of Solar System

Abell 30: a born-again planetary nebula Astronomers have found evidence for a dying Sun-like star coming briefly back to life after casting its gassy shells out into space, mimicking the possible fate our own Solar System faces in a few billion years.   This new picture of the planetary nebula Abell 30, located 5500 light-years from Earth, is a composite of visible images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and X-ray data from ESA’s...

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Lanka’s inaugural satellite launch on Thursday

The much awaited Sri Lanka’s inaugural and the regions third communication satellite launch would take place 2012.11.22 Thursday from Beijing China at 3 30 p.m. Sri Lankan time. The Supreme Group is a fast growing Sri Lankan home grown company with a special focus on Sri Lanka and regional satellite communication opportunities. They have already invested US $ 100 million. Chairman, Supreme Group, R. M. Manivannan (inset) and images...

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Orbiting in the Habitable Zone of Two Suns

This diagram compares our own solar system to Kepler-47, a double-star system containing two planets, one orbiting in the so-called "habitable zone." This is the sweet spot in a planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet. Unlike our own solar system, Kepler-47 is home to two stars. One star is similar to the sun in size, but only 84 percent as bright. The...

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Hubble Sees an Unexpected Population of Young-Looking Stars

  The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope offers an impressive view of the center of globular cluster NGC 6362. The image of this spherical collection of stars takes a deeper look at the core of the globular cluster, which contains a high concentration of stars with different colors. Tightly bound by gravity, globular clusters are composed of old stars, which, at around 10 billion...

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Sun Releases Slow Moving CME

On the left is an image of a CME from Nov. 9, 2012, as captured by the joint ESA/NASA Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) at 10:48 a.m. EST. The CME can be seen as the light band that appears to be spreading away from the dark disk at the center, which is used to block the bright light from the sun in order to observe the dimmer solar atmosphere. The right image is what’s called a “difference” image, which helps highlights recent changes...

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Asteroid Belts of Just the Right Size are Friendly to Life

Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's protoplanetary disk...

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Hubble Sees Violent Star Formation Episodes in Dwarf Galaxies

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged the faint irregular galaxy NGC 3738, a starburst galaxy. The galaxy is in the midst of a violent episode of star formation, during which it is converting reservoirs of hydrogen gas located in the galaxy’s center into stars. Hubble spots this gas glowing red around NGC 3738, one of the most distinctive signs of ongoing star formation. Lying in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear),...

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Monster Galaxy May Have Been Stirred Up By Black-hole Mischief

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