Read article 'Astrowatch'
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 'The quest for gravitational waves'
The gravitational waves emitted by accelerated masses were predicted by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity as long ago as 1916, but so far remain undetected.
Read article 'The case of the missing neutron stars'
Certain heavy stars at the end of their lives collapse in the most violent explosions known in the universe supernovae.
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....
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The furthest quasar Astronomers at the Sloan Digital Survey have broken the record for the most distant quasar ever observed. Quasars quasi-stellar objects are no larger than our solar s...
Read article 'The mysteries of cosmic rays'
Until the advent of high-energy accelerators in the 1950s, high-energy cosmic rays were the main source of information on subnuclear particles. Now they are back in the research spotlight and unexpla...
Read article 'Explosion forces rethink on stellar collapse'
An exceptionally powerful explosion in a nearby galaxy has led astronomers to re-examine their theories of stellar evolution. What is more, the explosion was co-incident with a burst of gamma rays, pr...
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Infrared reveals early universe Observations using the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) show that the first galaxies to form were far brighter than astronomers thought. The results were presented at a...
