ktanmay - Slashdot User

Submission + - Solar Cycle 24 may have finally begun (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

xyz

on Monday November 10, 2008 @10:36AM

xyz writes: "NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center reports that the number of sunspots in October for Solar Cycle 24 outnumbered Solar Cycle 23 for the first time, indicating the start of a new solar cycle. Solar activity was observed to be at a 50 year low, with no sunspots for 200 days this year."

Submission + - Deepest ground based image of universe obtained (eso.org)

Submitted by

xyz

on Sunday November 09, 2008 @12:13AM

xyz writes: "European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope has captured the deepest ground based U-band image of the universe. The image contains more than 27 million pixels and is the result of 55 hours of observations with the VIMOS instrument."

Submission + - New class of pulsars discovered (nasa.gov)

Submitted by

xyz

on Sunday November 02, 2008 @01:29AM

xyz writes: "NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a new class of pulsars which emit purely in gamma rays. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star, and of the nearly 1800 catalogued so far, only a small fraction emit at frequencies higher than radio waves. The gamma-ray-only pulsar, which lies within a supernova remnant known as CTA 1, is silent across parts of the electromagnetic spectrum where pulsars are normally found, indicating a new class of pulsars."

Submission + - Boeing-747 aircraft modified to act as telescope (astronomy.com)

Submitted by

xyz

on Friday October 31, 2008 @02:38AM

xyz writes: "A joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center, has developed a highly modified Boeing-747SP aircraft, to carry a 2.5-meter (98.4 inch) infrared telescope. The project SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy) will observe radiation in the wavelengths from 0.3 microns to 1.0 millimeters, spanning the visible, infrared, and sub-millimeter portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. The observations will be taken at an altitude of 40,000 to 45,000 feet (12 to 14 km) which is above 99.8 percent of the water vapor in Earth's atmosphere, thus giving it a greater range of observations."

Submission + - Black holes may not grow beyond certain limit (sciencenews.org)

Submitted by

xyz

on Monday October 27, 2008 @12:26AM

xyz writes: "Do black holes increase in size indefinitely? According to an analysis by astronomers at Yale and European Southern Observatory, the maximum size a black hole may reach is only few tens of billion solar masses. The limit was calculated using an analysis of what may happen to the gas surrounding a black hole which has reached few tens of billion solar masses. It is thought that black holes of such size heat the surrounding gas to a temperature where the radiation pressure begins blowing outer layers into space."

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