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...
Read article 'XMM-Newton measures the hot universe'
A new generation of X-ray observatories is under way to study the hottest parts of the observable universe. Among them the European Space Agency's X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM - now named XMM-New...
Read article 'Youngest radio galaxies observed'
A new class of baby radio galaxy has been discovered using very long baseline interferometry. The sources, dubbed compact symmetric objects, are the youngest radio galaxies ever observed – a mer...
Read article 'Magnetic fields point to high-energy rays'
New evidence for strong intergalactic magnetic fields may help to solve the mystery of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays. These particles can reach energies of more than 1020 eV – 100 million times a...
Read article 'Large Magellanic Cloud X-ray signal lost in black hole'
Newton, the European Space Agency’s new X-ray observatory (April p11), was undergoing routine calibration, imaging a known, stable X-ray source in the Large Magellanic Clouds, when all of a sudd...
Read article 'Watch this space for cosmophysics'
Space, the ultimate scientific frontier, is being opened up by a new generation of satellite-borne precision experiments, many of which use technology perfected in generations of particle physics s...
Read article 'Cosmology: the Science of the Universe '
Steve Reucroft reviews in 2000 Cosmology: the Science of the Universe .
Read article 'New class of gamma-ray sources is discovered'
The discovery of mysterious gamma-ray bursters in the late 1960s opened up a new chapter in astronomy. Now gamma-ray astronomy has taken another surprising turn.
