Year of the Comet
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)

PANSTARRS information

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

ISON information

Astronomy News

Your online destination for news articles on planets, cosmology, NASA, space missions, and more. You’ll also find information on how to observe upcoming visible sky events such as meteor showers, solar and lunar eclipses, key planetary appearances, comets, and asteroids.

November 2010
jets
The discovery of a galaxy that has a rare boomerang shape and unusual light emissions presents a new way to gauge the sandbar’s particle density.
By NASA/JPL
Published: November 30, 2010
Rhea
The discovery of this oxygen atmosphere provides key information on how radiation can drive chemistry on icy surfaces throughout the universe.

By University College London, United Kingdom
Published: November 30, 2010
IRAS 18162-2048

Scientists found that radio waves from the jet have a characteristic indicating they arose when fast-moving electrons interacted with magnetic fields.

By NRAO, Socorro, New Mexico
Published: November 29, 2010
Jupiter
Observations of the jovian planet’s returning belt will help scientists better understand the interaction between Jupiter’s winds and cloud chemistry.

By NASA/JPL
Published: November 29, 2010
Simulation Andromeda
Scientists find that the Andromeda Galaxy and the Magellanic Clouds may have formed during a gigantic collision between two galaxies.

By Paris Observatory, France
Published: November 24, 2010
LMC
Rare alignment of the orbits of two stars in a double star system allows measurement of Cepheid mass with unprecedented accuracy.

By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 24, 2010
XMM-Newton
The European Space Agency’s operating science missions will continue returning results until at least 2014.

By ESA, Noordwijk, Netherlands
Published: November 23, 2010
methane dwarf
A star system with a cool methane-rich T-dwarf star and a dying white dwarf stellar remnant in orbit around each other gives scientists the first good handle on T-dwarfs’ mass and age.

Published: November 23, 2010
Apertif
The ability to simultaneously detect radio signals of two widely separated pulsars ushers in a new era in radio astronomy.

By ASTRON, Dwingeloo, Netherlands
Published: November 22, 2010
NGC4150
New observations are helping to show that elliptical galaxies still have some youthful vigor left, thanks to encounters with smaller galaxies.

By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: November 22, 2010
Comet-Hartley
This information sheds new light on the nature of comets and even planets.

By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 19, 2010
exoplanet
Galactic cannibalism brings an exoplanet of extragalactic origin within astronomers' reach.

By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 19, 2010
NGC1514
The object, known as NGC 1514, belongs to a class of planetary nebulae that form when dying stars toss off their outer layers of material.

By NASA/JPL
Published: November 18, 2010
By International Astronomical Union
Published: November 18, 2010
J0923+3028 white dwarf system
While searching for hypervelocity stars escaping our galaxy, scientists found multiple binary white dwarf systems that could erupt as underluminous supernovae.
By Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Published: November 17, 2010
Allan-Sandage
Sandage is best known for determining the first reasonably accurate value for the Hubble constant and the age of the universe.
By Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 17, 2010
SN1979C
A bright source of X-rays that has remained steady during observation from 1995 to 2007 suggests the object is a black hole being fed either by material falling into it from a supernova or a binary companion.

By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 15, 2010
Merging-black-holes

Researchers are creating a detailed blueprint that will guide other scientists searching for merging black holes, using ordinary visible light and existing telescopes.

By Rochester Institute of Technology, New York
Published: November 15, 2010
lunar farside

The highlands may be the result of tidal forces acting early in the Moon’s history when its solid outer crust floated on an ocean of liquid rock.

By University of California - Santa Cruz
Published: November 12, 2010
dark matter in Abell 1689
The result suggests that galaxy clusters may have formed earlier than expected, before the push of dark energy inhibited their growth.

By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland
Published: November 12, 2010
Saturn's heat emission
The ringed world gradually gave off less energy each year between 2005 and 2009.
By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: November 11, 2010
Comet Hartley's carbon dioxide jets
Images from the November 4 Comet 103P/Hartley flyby show spectacular jets of gas and particles bursting from many distinct spots on the surface of the comet.
By the University of Maryland, College Park
Published: November 11, 2010
Atoms-for-Peace
The galactic pile-up provides an excellent opportunity for astronomers to study how mergers affect the evolution of the universe.

By ESO, Garching, Germany
Published: November 10, 2010
gamma-ray bubbles
The object spans 50,000 light-years, and it may be the remnant of an eruption from a super-sized black hole at the center of our galaxy.

By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 10, 2010
Sun photosphere
Because of the solar observatory’s high resolution, it is possible to characterize the Sun’s bright points within the photosphere for the first time.

By Max Planck Institute, Garching, Germany
Published: November 9, 2010
two spiral galaxies
The Galaxy Zoo 2 project helped an international team of scientists discover that bars in many spiral galaxies could be helping kill these star cities off.

By Royal Astronomical Society, United Kingdom
Published: November 9, 2010
Leonid-shower-Nov2010
November's celebrated meteors return for another dazzling show, but the Moon's light prevents ideal viewing.
By Bill Andrews
Published: November 9, 2010
LHC lead collision
The successful collisions in the accelerator at record energies allows matter to be probed as it would have been in the first moments of the universe's existence.

By the Science and Technology Facilities Council, United Kingdom
Published: November 8, 2010
GUCP
The delay will allow engineers and technicians time to diagnose and repair a hydrogen gas leak.

By NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Published: November 8, 2010
Comet C/2010 V1 (Ikeya-Murakami)
Grab your telescope and take a peek at Comet C/2010 V1 (Ikeya-Murakami) as it hangs low in the predawn sky near Saturn.
By Richard Talcott
Published: November 5, 2010
gravitational lensing
Astronomers can use these new cosmic magnifying lenses to study galaxies obscured by dust.

By NASA/JPL
Published: November 5, 2010
Comet 103P/Hartley at closest approach
The rendezvous with the comet is the third mission for the Deep Impact spacecraft.

By Ball Aerospace, Boulder, Colorado
Published: November 4, 2010
Voorwerp
Hanny’s Voorwerp represents a snapshot in time that reveals clues about the life cycle of black holes.

By Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Published: November 4, 2010
temperature-graph-intergala
The change is most likely caused by the huge amount of energy output from young, active galaxies in early cosmic history.

By Cambridge University, England
Published: November 3, 2010
Gamma-ray
A new analysis suggests that the remnant from a long-duration gamma-ray burst is most likely a black hole, not a neutron star.

By University of California, Berkeley
Published: November 3, 2010
Saturn-B-ring
Researchers find that Saturn’s rings are behaving like a spiral galaxy.

By STScl, Baltimore, Maryland, NASA/JPL
Published: November 2, 2010
Atacama-cosmology-scope
Observations will help scientists better understand how the universe was born and continues to evolve.

By Rutgers University
Published: November 2, 2010
martian-volcano
Such environments may have provided habitats for microbes analogous to some of Earth's earliest life-forms.

By NASA/JPL
Published: November 1, 2010
Kuiper-belt-object
The red colors of one particularly interesting group of objects — the Cold Classical Kuiper Belt — could come from organic materials in the layer just under the crust.

By NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
Published: November 1, 2010
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