Read article 'Remotest gamma burst seen'
A violent burst of gamma rays detected on 31 January has been pinpointed to a galaxy at a redshift of 4.5, making it the most remote such burst ever observed. Its brightness was enormous – 10 00...
Read article 'Final VLT telescope observes first light'
This autumn saw a double milestone for the European Southern Observatories’ Very Large Telescope (VLT) interferometer at the Paranal observatory, Chile. The fourth and final 8.2 m telescope of t...
Read article 'Chandra shows Crab pulsar rings'
The Crab supernova remnant is the remains of a star seen to explode in 1054 AD. In the explosion, the outer layers of the star were blasted off, leaving a dense rotating neutron star, or pulsar, in th...
Read article 'Sugar in space'
The prospects for life in the universe have just got sweeter with the first discovery of a simple sugar molecule in space. Glycolaldehyde can combine with other molecules to form the more complex suga...
Read article 'Boost for Andean cosmic ray laboratory'
New support for the Chacaltaya Cosmic Ray Research Laboratory, on Mount Chacaltaya near La Paz, Bolivia, underlines its relevance for cosmic ray research.
Read article 'Looking deep into galaxies'
Today’s telescopes allow astronomers to probe deep into the active inner regions of galaxies and see far back in time to the periods of momentous upheaval in the early universe. At this yearR...
Read article 'No smoking guns under the Sun'
A range of different experiments have studied in detail the neutrinos emitted by the Sun. What does this complex picture now tell us? Arnon Dar reviews the latest wisdom.
Read article 'Astronomy sets new targets'
Recent years have seen a transformation of many areas of astronomy. New instrumentation makes arcsecond resolution almost commonplace across the whole electromagnetic spectrum, where previously it was...
Read article 'The future looks bright'
A new class of extremely large telescope is on the drawing board. The European Southern Observatory (ESO) is funding a feasibility study for a ground-based, fully steerable, 100 m optical telescope ch...
Read article 'Pulsars are looking their age'
New pulsar observations could lead to a drastic reappraisal of pulsar ages and evolution. Pulsars, which “blink” regularly like powerful cosmic lighthouses in the depths of galaxies, are u...
