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Show 298: Monster Star
September 30, 2010
A recently discovered “monster star” could once have been 320 times as massive as the Sun and 10 million times as bright — twice as massive as scientists thought a star could be. This monstrous star resides deep inside the Tarantula Nebula, a bright region of hydrogen gas in the neighboring galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Show 297: HubbleWatch for September 2010
September 23, 2010
Knocked aside by a black hole, a star is hurtling out of our galaxy at tremendous speed. Hubble is searching the realm beyond Neptune for the icy bodies that give birth to comets.
Show 296: Buried Life on Mars?
September 23, 2010
Researchers have identified rocks they say could contain fossilized remains of life from early Mars. The team made the discovery in a region known as Nili Fossae. The trench on Mars resembles an area in Australia where some of the earliest fossil evidence of life on Earth was found.
Show 295: Dark Energy
September 16, 2010
Dark energy, a mysterious force that seems to be accelerating the expansion of the universe, was discovered in 1998. Ever since, astronomers have been trying to refine the measurements of the effects of dark energy, and figure out exactly what it is. Observations of supernovae, cosmic microwave background radiation, and other phenomena have contributed to the trove of data about dark energy. The latest method to refine the measurements relies on studying the dark matter distribution of a huge cluster of galaxies known as Abell 1689.
Show 294: Astro 2010
September 9, 2010
An artist's depiction of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, one of the proposed new telescopes for the next era of astronomy.
Every decade, the National Academy of Sciences convenes a committee of astronomers to survey the science community and prioritize research questions and facilities for the next decade. Funding is tight and astronomers’ ambitions are grand, so information gathering is vital. The results are presented in the Astro 2010 report. The recommendations of the committee attempt to produce a balanced program of space- and ground-based astronomy, driven by the pressing astrophysics questions of the day.
Show 292: Wet Past for Red Planet
August 26, 2010
New evidence indicates that Mars was once a watery world. Now new analysis of Mars’ dry valleys and river deltas suggests an ancient Martian ocean may have covered large portions of the planet long in its past — around three and half billion years ago.
Show 291: Galaxy Ejects Star
August 19, 2010
Researchers are keen to understand the distribution of matter in the universe, and understanding our own galaxy is a key to this puzzle. By observing the motions of stars in our own galaxy, the distribution of material can be determined. In such studies, a few very fast “hypervelocity” stars have been found. A new Hubble Space Telescope observation indicates that one of these stars has been ejected from the center of the Milky Way in a bizarre scenario. The object was originally part of a multiple-star system, and one component was trapped in the galaxy’s core, while the other two were ejected and eventually merged into the object we see today.
Show 290: Perseid Shower
August 12, 2010
Credit: NASA/MSFC/D. Moser, NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office
The annual Perseid Meteor Shower lit the sky in August, for those lucky enough to have a clear sky and energetic enough to stay up past midnight. The meteors that skim across the sky every year are tiny bits of dust burning up in the EarthÕs atmosphere. The Perseid debris was left behind by the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle.
