From ESO, spectacular star-filled nights frame the telescope array of the new ALMA project, where scientists are taking on the mysteries of the cold hidden reaches of the universe. ALMA is the world’s largest astronomical project. But it is not a conventional telescope. Instead of collecting and analyzing visible light it looks in a different and largely unmapped part of the spectrum. By opening a new window on the cosmos, ALMA explores one of the last frontiers of astronomy — the cold and distant Universe. All in search of answers to some of the deepest questions about our cosmic origins. How do stars and planets form? How did the first galaxies form?

Sixty-six state-of-the-art antennas observe the Universe at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths — one thousand times longer than visible wavelengths. This light reaches us from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the Universe. Water vapor in the atmosphere blocks these faint whispers from the hidden Universe, so to collect them we have to go to an extremely high and dry site — like Chajnantor.

The 66 antennas on the high plateau are a critical part of ALMA. Their big dishes collect the faint millimeter waves from space. These Continue reading Solving Cosmic Cold Cases →

The amazing Benedict Cumberbatch narrates our new giant screen, ultra high-res fulldome show. It’s just been released into global distribution, so it might open at a planetarium theater near you.

The show takes us back 74,000 years ago, to the island of Sumatra. A volcanic eruption triggered the sudden and violent collapse of a vast regional plateau. Toba, as the volcano is known today, was the largest volcanic eruption in the last 25 million years. But Earth has seen far larger. 250 million years ago, an eruption in what’s now Siberia lasted a million years and was probably responsible for the greatest episode of mass extinction in Earth’s history.

Supervolcanoes is an immersive planetarium show that looks back at rare classes of eruptions that have marshaled the energy that lurks, like a sleeping dragon, beneath the surface of planet Earth. The program moves beyond Earth to explore the impact of giant volcanic eruptions around our solar system. Audiences will fly down to Neptune’s frigid moon Triton, and onto the ultimate volcanic world: Jupiter’s moon Io. On a visit to a legendary North American hot spot, Yellowstone National Park, the film asks: can a supervolcano erupt in our time?

Supervolcanoes is a co-production of Continue reading Supervolcanoes – Fulldome Trailer →

From Hubblecast, the unveiling of Hubble’s 23rd Anniversary image: a stunning new image of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies: the Horsehead Nebula. This image shows the nebula in a whole new light, capturing plumes of gas in the infrared and revealing a beautiful, delicate structure that is normally obscured by dust.

This year marks the 23rd year of observing for the Hubble Space Telescope. Alongside cutting-edge science, the orbiting observatory has produced countless stunning astronomical images. Some of the most striking and beautiful subjects of Hubble’s images have been nebulae — vast interstellar clouds of gas and dust.

This new Hubble image, captured and released to celebrate this milestone, shows part of the sky in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter). Rising like a giant seahorse from turbulent waves of dust and gas is the Horsehead Nebula, otherwise known as Barnard 33. The nebula formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud of material, and glows as it is illuminated by a nearby hot star [1].

The gas clouds surrounding the Horsehead have already dissipated, but the jutting pillar is made of stronger stuff — thick clumps of material — that is harder to erode. Astronomers estimate that the Horsehead formation Continue reading Horsehead Sculpted in Dust →

What causes a Tornado to form? How can we foresee them? New technologies are giving people more and more time to prepare and seek shelter in a time of crisis, whether it be from information gathered on the ground or spectacular visual mapping from new satellites in space. Engineer and storm chaser Tim Samaras gives his unique perspective and insight on the situation.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and Hubblecast bring you a new and detailed look at the famous Ring Nebula. The Ring’s distinctive shape makes it a popular illustration for astronomy books. But new observations of the glowing gas shroud around an old, dying, Sun-like star reveal a new twist.

Hubble and several ground-based telescopes have combined to obtain the best view yet of the iconic nebula. The images show a more complex structure than astronomers once thought and have allowed them to construct the most precise 3-D model of the nebula.

The Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years from Earth and measures roughly 1 light-year across. Located in the constellation Lyra, the nebula is a popular target for amateur astronomers. Previous observations by several telescopes had detected the gaseous material in the ring’s central region. But the new view by Hubble’s sharp-eyed Wide Field Camera 3 shows the nebula’s structure in more detail. The ring appears to wrap around a blue, football-shaped structure. Each end of the structure protrudes out of opposite sides of the ring.

The nebula is tilted toward Earth so that astronomers see the ring face-on. In the Hubble image, the blue structure is the glow of helium. Radiation Continue reading The Mighty Ring →

Revel in some of the highest resolution images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Experience anew the detail in these inspiring images, snatched from distant galaxies, exploding stars, brilliant gas clouds, and black holes.

From ESO. Astronomers now know that planets around other stars are plentiful. But they do not fully understand how they form and there are many aspects of the formation of comets, planets and other rocky bodies that remain a mystery. However, new observations exploiting the power of the ALMA telescope array are now answering one of the biggest questions: how do tiny grains of dust in the disc around a young star grow bigger and bigger — to eventually become rubble, and even boulders well beyond a metre in size?

Computer models suggest that dust grains grow when they collide and stick together. However, when these bigger grains collide again at high speed they are often smashed to pieces and sent back to square one. Even when this does not happen, the models show that the larger grains would quickly move inwards because of friction between the dust and gas and fall onto their parent star, leaving no chance that they could grow even further.

Somehow the dust needs a safe haven where the particles can continue growing until they are big enough to survive on their own [1]. Such “dust traps” have been proposed, but there was no observational proof of Continue reading Dust Traps and Planet Factories →

From Hubblecast, a vivid new image of colliding galaxies known as Arp 142. When two galaxies stray too close to each other they begin to interact, causing spectacular changes in both objects. In some cases the two can merge — but in others, they are ripped apart.

Just below the center of this image is the blue, twisted form of galaxy NGC 2936, one of the two interacting galaxies that form Arp 142 in the constellation of Hydra. Nicknamed “the Penguin” or “the Porpoise” by amateur astronomers, NGC 2936 used to be a standard spiral galaxy before being torn apart by the gravity of its cosmic companion.

The remnants of its spiral structure can still be seen — the former galactic bulge now forms the “eye” of the penguin, around which it is still possible to see where the galaxy’s pinwheeling arms once were. These disrupted arms now shape the cosmic bird’s “body” as bright streaks of blue and red across the image. These streaks arch down towards NGC 2936’s nearby companion, the elliptical galaxy NGC 2937, visible here as a bright white oval. The pair show an uncanny resemblance to a penguin safeguarding its egg.

The effects of gravitational interaction between galaxies Continue reading No Gentle Galaxy Collision →

Astronomers working at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile have discovered seven planets orbiting the star Gliese 667C.

Two exoplanets have been discovered in the star’s habitable zone, which has just the right range of distance where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface.

A super-Earth is an extrasolar planet with a mass higher than Earth’s, but substantially below the mass of the Solar System’s smaller gas giants Uranus and Neptune, which are both more or less 15 Earth masses.

The term super-Earth refers only to the mass of the planet, and does not imply anything about the surface conditions or habitability.

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile found out that 40 per cent of red dwarves are orbited by super-Earths. Red Dwarfs are by far the most common type of star in the Milky Way galaxy, so there might be tens of billions of such planets in our galaxy alone.

From NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. While Curiosity prepares to snap pictures at Point Lake on Mars, here’s a round up the rover’s 17 cameras, including why some shoot in color and others go for black-and-white.