Read article 'Gamma-ray bursts are linked to star-forming regions'
At the Gamma Ray 2001 conference in Baltimore, Luigi Piro of the Istituto Astrofisica Spaziale in Rome presented new evidence linking gamma-ray bursts to dense regions of star formation. Gamma-ray bur...
Read article 'Keck heralds a new era for optical astronomy'
On the night of 12 March, the Keck interferometer in Hawaii began operations. It is currently the largest optical telescope in the world, with a resolution equivalent to that of a single telescope wit...
Read article 'Black hole survey'
NASA has chosen the first six science projects for its Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTEF). By far the biggest chunk of observing time will go to the Black Holes and Galaxies project – an...
Read article 'Uranium dating suggests new age of universe'
The first measurement of uranium outside our solar system suggests that the universe is at least 12.5 billion years old. Just as the radioactive decay of carbon-14 is used for dating archaeological re...
Read article 'Antu telescope reveals secrets of the stars'
Observations using the European Southern Observatories’ Antu telescope in Chile are helping to shed light on the mystery of star formation. Stars form from interstellar clouds of gas and dust th...
Read article 'Black holes show up in early galaxies'
Radio observations have shown the presence of black holes in the centre of early galaxies. The new results support the theory that supermassive black holes played a crucial role in the formation of ga...
Read article 'Antennas tune in to high-energy particles'
After 40 years of research, physicists met at the First International Workshop on the Radio Detection of High Energy Particles to discuss the detection of high-energy cosmic rays and neutrinos using...
Read article 'Hubble Telescope explores the event horizon'
Observations using the Hubble Space Telescope show matter disappearing as it falls beyond an event horizon. If correct, this would be the first direct evidence for the existence of black holes. An eve...
Read article 'ESA launches Lobster'
As ESA headquarters in Paris celebrated the first birthday of its XMM-Newton X-ray space observatory, astronomers were already planning the next generation of X-ray telescopes. Lobster is on the cards...
Read article 'Background hots up'
The spectrum of a distant quasar reveals the presence of cosmic microwave background radiation when the universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The observations allow astronomers to place limits on t...
