Read article 'The Hubble century'
The name of Hubble will be eternally linked with 20th-century astronomy. At the beginning of the 20th century astronomers knew of planets and stars, and anything else was called a nebula (derived from...
Read article 'A masing new ruler'
Observations of astronomical water masers have provided us with a new measure of distance in space. Maser emission was detected by a team using the US Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA), from material ro...
Read article 'Italian astronomy enters new era'
Astronomers in Italy will soon have a new coordinating body the National Institute of Astrophysics to regroup the 12 national observatories and strengthen ties with university astronomy ...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Galileo telescope Galileo, the new 3.5 m Italian national telescope, will soon be open to astronomers. Situated on the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory in the Canary Islands at an altitude of 2400 m...
Read article 'Latest news from the early universe'
This month the first elements of the Very Small Array will be installed on Mount Teide in Tenerife. This is one of a number of new projects studying the cosmic microwave background. Observations of th...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
New study of distant quasars Subaru, Japan’s new 8.3 m telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii (CERN Courier March), is being used for a new study of gravitationally lensed quasars. A luminosity of mor...
Read article 'Cosmology not constant'
A simulation of the evolution of the universe suggests that it is expanding at an accelerating rate. This is more evidence for the existence of Einstein’s cosmological constant a kind of ...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Millennium ‘delayed’ by space mission to Saturn Hold the champagne! Millennium celebrations throughout the world will be delayed. The culprit is the Cassini-Huygens space mission, which fl...
Read article 'Chandra blasts off'
An X-ray equivalent of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray observatory, was launched on 23 July. Astronomers look forward to a new view of the violent universe with the highest-quality image...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Gemini to see furthest stars Cosmology gains a twin as the first of two new international telescopes starts observations. The Gemini pair will explore the skies in both the northern and southern hemis...
