Astronomy

A blazar is a very compact and highly variable energy source associated with a supermassive black hole. It is also characterized by a relativistic jet that is pointing in the general direction of the Earth. Blazars are among the most violent phenomena in the universe and are an important topic in extragalactic astronomy. Now, for [...]

On December 20th, 2007, United Nations has declares 2009 as the International Year of Astronomy. The event marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of a telescope for astronomical observations. This is a momentous event that initiated 400 years of astronomical discoveries and triggered a scientific revolution which profoundly affected our worldview. The vision of the [...]

On April 24th, eighteen years ago, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery deployed the Hubble Space Telescope. This marks beginning of the new era of the space research. Hubble’s discoveries have transformed the way scientists look at the universe. Its ability to show the universe in unprecedented detail has turned astronomical conjectures into concrete certainties. [...]

Pictured here is a Hubble Space Telescope image on Stingray Nebula. Located in constellation Ara (The Altar) at the distance of 18.000 light years, this beautiful object considered as the youngest planetary nebula ever observed!

An international team led by French and Canadian astronomers has just discovered the coldest brown dwarf ever observed. Their results has been on April 10th issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics. The brown dwarf is named CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3 (it will be called CFBDS0059 in the following). Its temperature is about 350°C and its mass about 15-30 times [...]

This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows the debris of a massive star explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. The supernova remnant (SNR) shown here, N132D, is the brightest in the Magellanic clouds, and belongs to a rare class of oxygen-rich remnants. Most of the oxygen that [...]