Astronomers look to ‘virtual’ observatories
The first virtual observatory to receive significant funding will be a European project called ASTROVIRTEL, which is based at the ESO headquarters in Garching, Germany. European astronomers will be ab...
Comet Hyakutake makes a mark on Ulysses
Ulysses was launched to make continuous measurements of the solar wind, a steady stream of ionized particles that flows outwards from the star. In 1998 Pete Riley and colleagues from Los Alamos Nation...
Space-based telescope will look for Earth-like planets
“Microlensing is the only way low-mass planets can be detected from the ground,” says Sun Hong Rhie from the University of Notre Dame and a member of MPS team. Rhie and his colleague David...
ESA gets flexible
The three space science missions are: STORMS, a set of three spacecraft that will be used to monitor magnetic storms in space; SOLAR ORBITER, a mission to study the surface and atmosphere of the Sun i...
Read article: X-ray telescope burns-up
X-ray telescope burns-up
Meanwhile, ESA this week released the first two images from XMM-Newton. One shows the Magellanic Cloud, with hot gas released from supernova explosions and new stars being created in a interstellar nu...
Read article: Hubble back in business
Hubble back in business
Eskimo Nebula is 5000 light years from Earth and resembles a face inside a furry parka when viewed from ground-based telescopes. Hubble resolved the ‘hood’ into a disk of material containi...
Adaptive-optics to cover the sky
Adaptive-optic telescopes differ from normal telescopes by using a thin flexible primary mirror that can easily be deformed. A bright guide star near the observing area acts as a “beacon” ...
NAUTILUS detects cosmic rays
NAUTILUS was designed to observe the gravitational waves produced by collisions between objects such as black holes or neutron stars. According to the Frascati’s group calculations, signals from...
Astronomy and physics dominate Science top ten
Confirmation that the universe is flat – expanding at just the right rate not to collapse – came from measurements of ripples in the cosmic background radiation left over from the big bang...
Light glimpsed from extra-solar planet
Light from the planet is almost completely obliterated by the bright glare from the star. Although the reflected signal is 10-20,000 times weaker than the glare from tau Bootis, the planet studied by ...
