Subscribe to Gizmag's RSS feed
Follow Gizmag on Twitter
Astronomy
Femtoseconds lasers will help formation flying in space
14:26 October 6, 2009 PDT
Theoretical work commissioned to the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) by the European Space Agency has recently concluded that lasers capable of generating extremely short pulses — known as "femtosecond comb lasers" — could be of great help in measuring the distance between two or more spacecraft to an accuracy of just a few microns, an essential component to formation flying space missions scheduled for the next decades. Read More
Nullarbor fireball cameras lead scientists to location of rare meteorite
By Jeff Salton
17:12 September 21, 2009 PDT
Not long ago, Gizmag featured an article about scientists capturing a rare image of upwards lightning. Now a different set of ‘men in white coats’ has taken shots of fireballs streaking across the night sky that then led to the discovery of a tiny and extremely rare meteorite in Australia’s vast Nullarbor Plain. Not only that, the group also traced the meteorite’s roots back to its orbit and the asteroid from where it came. Read More
The coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth
By Darren Quick
01:30 September 1, 2009 PDT
When you’re planning your next holiday, a site known as Ridge A that sits 4,053m (2.5 miles) high up on the Antarctic Plateau, will probably be one of the first places to strike off the list. Although the research team that discovered it says it could be the calmest place on Earth, it is also thought to be the coldest and driest. A joint U.S.-Australian team pinpointed the site by combining data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in an attempt to find the best observatory site in the world by assessing the many factors that affect astronomy, such as cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence. Read More
X-ray telescope to shed light on dark energy
By Darren Quick
00:45 August 21, 2009 PDT
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) and Russia’s Roskosmos space agency are joining forces to try and shed some light on the poorly understood phenomenon referred to as ‘dark energy’. In 2012 the German 'extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array'(eROSITA) X-ray telescope will be taken into orbit on board the Russian Spektrum Roentgen Gamma (SRG) satellite to start searching for black holes and dark matter in an attempt to answer why the expansion of the universe is accelerating instead of slowing down. Read More
Raytheon announces improved infrared detector
By Paul Ridden
18:41 August 17, 2009 PDT
Raytheon has announced the creation of the world's largest infra-red light wave detector, the "4K by 4K" focal plane array. Not only will it allow whole hemisphere satellite monitoring at 16 megapixel resolution but it should also make sensors less dependent on the complicated scanning mechanisms used in current systems. Read More
Fastest astronomical camera will produce out-of-this-world pictures
01:28 June 23, 2009 PDT
While the twinkle of stars may delight poets and lovers, for a scientist it’s simply evidence of the atmospheric disturbance that blurs and distorts detail in deep space images. Combining an incredible 1500 exposures a second capability with an extremely sensitive CCD220 image sensor, the OCam camera is able to analyze and correct these distortions, enabling pictures taken through Very Large Telescopes (VLT) on Earth to be as sharp as those taken from space. Read More
Astronomers discover new way to search for life elsewhere
By Darren Quick
22:27 June 17, 2009 PDT
Directly observing planets outside our solar system - called exoplanets - is almost impossible because they are washed out by the glare of the parent star. For this reason astronomers have largely relied on indirect methods that observe the effects of the planets on their parent stars instead of the planets themselves. Such indirect detection methods have helped take the number of exoplanets discovered so far to more than 350, but determining whether signs of life exist on a planet that can’t actually be seen presents a problem. Astronomers from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) have found a solution. Read More
Universe made simple with release of Meade ETX-LS automated telescope
22:31 June 15, 2009 PDT
Amateur astronomers around the world have cause to celebrate as the first completely hands-off self-aligning telescope becomes available. First shown as CES in January, the Meade ETX-LS telescope uses a range of technologies, including GPS, magnetic sensors and a built-in CCD camera, to automatically determine its own location and then find any of more than 100,000 celestial objects. Read More
Astronomers make unprecedented asteroid impact observations
22:04 April 5, 2009 PDT
Asteroid impact is a very real threat to the earth. While the statistics on the probability of such occurrences vary in certainty, it is generally accepted that objects 5-10m in diameter hit the earth once every year while the odds of a devastating asteroid strike is approximately one in ten chance of hitting per century. Clearly, with the potentially monumental costs of such a devastating strike occurring, it is in our best interest to know as much as we can about potential strikes. Any ability to see such a catastrophe in advance has the potential to be of civilization saving significance, which brings us to the unprecedented observations made of 2008 TC3, an asteroid that fell to Earth late last year. Read More
This battle station is fully operational - the world's largest laser nears completion
By Darren Quick
15:36 March 5, 2009 PST
Lasers, is there anything they can’t do? If they’re not shooting down UAVs, they’re fighting AIDS or bringing us the next generation of HDTVs. That’s all well and good, but when it comes to lasers there’s none bigger than the National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California - an instrument capable of delivering 500 trillion watts of power in a 20-nanosecond burst which is now nearing completion. Its myriad uses will include providing fusion data for nuclear weapons simulations, probing the secrets of extrasolar planets and could even lead to the holy grail of energy production - practical fusion energy. Read More
Planet seeking Kepler Spacecraft readies for launch
By Kyle Sherer
16:56 February 25, 2009 PST
On March 5, NASA will launch the largest camera ever sent into space in an attempt to find the holy grail of astronomy: an Earth-like planet. The $591 million Kepler craft will orbit the sun for at least 3.5 years, using an unprecedented 0.95-meter diameter Schmidt telescope packing an array of 42 CCDs, each with 2200x1024 pixels, to scan over 100,000 stars in the Cygnus-Lyra region of the galaxy. The craft is seeking planets in the “goldilocks” zone – not too close to the sun, and not too far – but the scope of the project means that no matter what scientists find, our understanding of the universe will be greatly enhanced. Read More
Meade EXT-LS telescope knows where to begin
19:01 January 18, 2009 PST
Telescopes that use computerized navigation to help stargazers find their way around the heavens have been with us for some time, but there's still a problem for the amateur astronomer - knowing where to start. The new Meade EXT-LS telescope makes this task of finding a starting reference point easy by combining a range of technologies including a built in CCD camera, magnetic sensors and GPS to automatically align itself, making it a truly "point-and-shoot" telescope. Read More
Historic pics show worlds beyond our solar system
01:22 November 14, 2008 PST
In two separate scientific show-stoppers, unprecedented direct images of planets outside of our own solar system have been captured by NASA's Hubble space telescope and terrestrial observatories in Hawaii. Over the past two decades astronomers have detected around 300 exoplanets and are rapidly finding more, but these have mostly been observed by methods such as monitoring the gravitational effects of a planet on its parent star rather than seen as a direct optical image. We now have the first visible-light snapshot of a planet circling another star from the Hubble, and the first-ever direct images of an exoplanetary system from the massive 8-meter Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea. Read More
The world's most powerful laser
00:44 April 17, 2008 PDT
April 17, 2008 A team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin has demonstrated the highest powered laser in the world. With greater than one quadrillion watts of laser power, the level of output achieved on March 31 by the Texas Petawatt laser is equivalent to more than 2,000 times the output of all power plants in the United States and brighter than the Sun's surface, according team leader and physicist at The University of Texas at Austin, Dr.Todd Ditmire. Read More
The smallest black hole ever
23:04 April 6, 2008 PDT
April 7, 2008 Using measurements taken by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite, NASA scientists have identified the smallest known black hole in the universe. At 3.8 times the mass of our Sun and estimated at only 15 miles in diameter, the black hole known as XTE J1650 is also close to the smallest size thought to be theoretically possible for such an object. Read More
Hubble breakthrough boosts search for life outside our solar system
23:35 March 25, 2008 PDT
March 26, 2008 In another first for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST), an organic molecule has been detected in the In another first for atmosphere of a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a star 63 light-years (or somewhere in the vicinity of 370 trillion miles) away. Given that the molecule found was methane, a key chemical player in the "primeval soup" from which life was formed on this planet, the discovery represents a significant breakthrough in the search for life outside our solar system. Read More
"Strikingly similar" planetary system discovered
23:20 February 19, 2008 PST
February 20, 2008 With upwards of 100 billion stars in our own Milky Way and at least that number of galaxies in the observable universe, the odds have long pointed to the likely existence of planets beyond our own solar system. The first discovery of such an extra-solar planet to receive subsequent confirmation took place in 1988 and two decades later, as detection techniques and equipment continue to improve, that number is now approaching 300. Now news that Astronomers from the University of St Andrews have found a new planetary system some 5,000 light years away that bears "striking similarities" to our Solar system. Read More
Navigating the night-sky: Celestron's SkyScout Scope
18:38 January 7, 2008 PST
January 8, 2008 There are few things that reinforce the unfathomable wonder of our existence as much as pointing a telescope at the night sky. While gazing at the stars is one thing, identifying exactly what you are looking at can present hurdles for the amateur astronomer - a problem that telescope manufacturer Celestron has addressed with the release of the SkyScout Scope, a 90 mm refractor telescope designed for use with the SkyScout® Personal Planetarium® that allows back-yard stargazers to locate, identify and learn more about thousands of celestial objects. Read More
50th anniversary of Sputnik satellite launch
06:34 October 4, 2007 PDT
October 4, 2007 Today marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of the Sputnik satellite. Even half a century on, the impact of the October 4th 1957 launch that saw the Soviet Union’s satellite became the first to be put into orbit still resonates as a momentous achievement in the history of human endeavor. Considered the first real blow in the "Space race" between the USSR and the USA, the launch provided the springboard for an exciting period of space exploration carried out by the two countries. Read More
Google Earth moves to become Google Universe
By Loz Blain
20:38 August 23, 2007 PDT
August 24, 2007 The world is not enough for Google Earth. The groundbreaking free application already provides satellite photos, maps, street-level photos and a vast range of data overlays for most of the planet, and its latest incarnation looks to the heavens as well. A fantastic resource for backyard astronomers, the new Sky module lets users explore the planets, stars, constellations and galaxies of the night sky, including high resolution highlights from the Hubble Space Telescope and useful information overlays. Read More
Terotech
- November 21, 2009 @ 19:38 UTC
