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05/31/2007

Astronomers Find Their Third Planet With Novel Telescope Network

Robert Tindol

Astronomers using the Trans-atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) network of small telescopes are announcing today their discovery of a planet twice the mass of Jupiter that passes in front of its star every 31 hours. The planet is in the constellation Hercules and has been named TrES-3 as the third planet found with the TrES network.

05/30/2007

Running Rings Around the Galaxy

Robert Tindol

An astronomer at the California Institute of Technology has discovered three giant stellar streams arcing high over the Milky Way. Remnants of cannibalized galaxies and star clusters, the streams are between 13,000 and 130,000 light-years distant from Earth and extend over much of the northern sky. The new results are being presented by Carl Grillmair at this week's meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Honolulu, Hawaii.

05/29/2007

Newly Discovered Olympian Galaxy Will Provide Fresh Insights into Galactic Formation

Kathy Svitil

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy in our local group has been found to have formed in a region of space far from our own and is falling into our system for the first time in its history.

05/23/2007

Caltech and Berkeley Astronomers Identify a New Class of Cosmic Explosions

Robert Tindol

Astronomers are announcing today the discovery of a new class of stellar explosions. The finding is based on observations of a flash seen in the Virgo cluster in a galaxy known as Messier 85.

04/12/2007

Astronomers Obtain Highly Detailed Image of the "Red Square" By Using Adaptive Optics of Palomar and Keck Telescopes

Astronomers today announced the arrival of a new member in the pantheon of exotically beautiful celestial objects. Christened the "Red Square" by Peter Tuthill, leader of the team, the image was compiled with data from the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology, and the Keck-2 Telescope atop Mauna Kea, Hawaii.

04/05/2007

Caltech Observatory Receives Science Education Award

Jill Perry

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory in Hanford, Washington, which was created by the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and funded by the National Science Foundation, has received a science education award.

04/04/2007

Astrophysicists Using Space Observatories Catch Magnetar in Gigantic Stellar Belch

Robert Tindol

When it comes to eerie astrophysical effects, the neutron stars commonly known as magnetars are hard to beat. The massive remnants of exploded stars, magnetars are the size of mountains but weigh as much as the sun, and have magnetic fields hundreds of trillions of times more powerful than the earthly field that turns our compass needles north.

04/03/2007

Twisted Flux Tubes Expel "Wrong-Way" Ions

John Avery

Physicists seeking to tame plasma have figured out yet another of its wily ways. Knowing how plasma escapes the grip of magnetic fields may help researchers design better magnetic bottles to contain it. Magnetic confinement could be a crucial technology for electric power plants that harness nuclear fusion, the powerful process fueling the sun.

03/22/2007

Negative Refraction of Visible Light Demonstrated; Could Lead to Cloaking Devices

Robert Tindol

For the first time, physicists have devised a way to make visible light travel in the opposite direction that it normally bends when passing from one material to another, like from air through water or glass. The phenomenon is known as negative refraction and could in principle be used to construct optical microscopes for imaging things as small as molecules, and even to create cloaking devices for rendering objects invisible.

03/14/2007

Kuiper-belt Object Was Broken up by Massive Impact 4.5 Billion Years Ago, Study Shows

Robert Tindol

In the outer reaches of the solar system, there is an object known as 2003 EL61 that looks like and spins like a football being drop-kicked over the proverbial goalpost of life.

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