Read article 'Space agency looks to the future'
“The decisions taken here in Brussels will set the direction for the agency for the next five years and beyond,” said European Space Agency (ESA) director Antonio Rodota, following a meeti...
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Planck and FIRST given go-ahead The planning of two major astrophysics missions has been approved by ESA’s scientific policy committee. The satellites Planck and FIRST will be launched together ...
Read article 'Galactic record set'
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the most distant, and therefore the youngest, object ever observed. The galaxy existed when the universe was only 5% of its present age (re...
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Water, water everywhere The third mission in NASA’s small explorer programme was launched last December. The Submillimetre-Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) is designed to study the chemical compo...
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Gamma-ray bursts The most powerful objects in the universe are also the most mysterious. Gamma-ray bursts can emit more energy in a few seconds than all of the 1011 stars in our galaxy emit over a few...
Read article 'Tantalum detector'
A new development in detector technology is good news for astronomers. Designed by a team in the space science department of the European Space Agency’s Science and Technology Centre, the detect...
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ESO update The first 8.2 m telescope of the Very Large Telescope array opens to astronomers on 1 April. It has already made interesting discoveries during its commisioning stage. Observations of one o...
Read article 'Gas reveals secrets of universe evolution'
New observations using the ROSAT X-ray telescope endorse a “bottom-up” model of the evolution of the universe. Most ordinary matter in the universe is in the hot gas that makes up the inte...
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Stars seeing stars Subaru, a new Japanese telescope, saw first light in January. It joins the UK infrared telescope, the Dutch, UK and Canadian James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the US Keck Observator...
Read article 'Supernova testbed'
A nearby active galaxy reveals a unique population of exploding stars. Astronomers at the UK’s Jodrell Bank radio astronomy laboratory have observed over 50 supernova remnants in the galaxy M82....
