Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but until now no one has witnessed a star dying in real time. While looking at another object in the spiral galaxy NGC 2770, using NASA's orbiting Swift telescope, astronomers detected an extremely luminous blast of X-rays released by a supernova explosion. They alerted 8 other orbiting and on-ground telescopes to turn their eyes on this first-of-its-kind event.
The Swift satellite has made another fortuitous observation. This time, and for the first time ever, astronomers have caught a star in the act of going supernova. These stellar explosions have been observed before, but always after the fireworks were well underway. "For years we have dreamed of seeing a star just [...]
It's Wednesday, so that means its time for another "Where In The Universe" challenge to test your visual knowledge of the cosmos. We've been busy searching hither and yon for unusual and unique astronomical images to see how well our readers are acquainted with the various locals across the universe. This week's image [...]
When space probes Galileo, Rosetta, NEAR and Cassini carried out Earth flyby manoeuvre, scientists measured a bizarre and unpredictable jumps in orbital acceleration. To this day, the phenomenon remains unexplained, but there are many ideas as to how this flyby anomaly may be caused. As previously reported on the Universe Today, some of the scientific [...]
The next few evenings will provide excellent opportunities for observing the International Space Station in the night skies above both Europe and North America. Beginning this evening, May 21 through May 23 the ISS will pass over from two to four times per night, depending on your location. Because of the station's current [...]
Every year my car insurance company provides a free road atlas that helps me get where I need to go. Now, the imaging team from the Cassini spacecraft is ensuring that future travelers will be able to find their way around Saturn's icy moons by providing detailed atlases of the surface features of these [...]
Astronomers have found that one of the solar system's largest and newest storms -- Jupiter's Little Red Spot -- has some of the highest wind speeds ever detected on any planet. This is the first time that high resolution, close--up imaging of the Little Red Spot has been combined with powerful Earth--orbital and ground-based imagery made at ultraviolet through mid--infrared wavelengths.
Centrifuging astronauts for a lengthy period provided Dutch researcher Suzanne Nooij with better insight into how space sickness develops, the nausea and disorientation experienced by many astronauts.