You’ll remember that, about a year ago, Canadian astronomers announced the discovery of a small asteroid sharing the earth’s orbit.
The asteroid in question, 2010 TK7, is a “planetary Trojan” – an object…
An artist's conception of the Square Kilometre Array … which could live in South Africa or Australia/New Zealand.
SKA
By David Jones, Max Planck Institut für Kernphysik
The battle for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope is heating up. The SKA board was scheduled to choose a site – South Africa or Australia and New Zealand – earlier this year but a decision…
The James Webb Space Telescope will search for stars in the dawning universe.
BOBXNC
When the Obama administration announced its proposed NASA budget in February, astronomers worldwide breathed a sigh of relief. Despite significant cuts in other areas, funding for the James Webb Space…
GRBs have puzzled astronomers for decades, and there is still plenty to learn.
EOS/A Roquette
Ever since they were discovered accidentally in the 1960s, gamma ray bursts (GRBs) have continued to amaze and puzzle astronomers worldwide. In nearly 50 years of research there seem to have been more…
New infrastructure is putting the Australian space industry on the map.
RSAA
Space exploration is one of the few science-rich human endeavours that captivates both expert and layperson alike. There is a mystery – a romanticism – associated with space research and technology that…
Two "new" black holes, in relatively nearby galaxies, are the largest ever found.
tsand
Black holes have long been the staple of science fiction, being monstrous beasts with a gravitational pull that prevents even light from escaping.
As well as being useful plot devices, offering mechanisms…
If the signs are right, fundamental equations of cosmology may need altering.
waljoris
A radical discovery by my colleagues and I – reported this week in Physical Review Letters – could help explain why it was possible for life (at least as we know it) to develop on Earth, but not in other…
We know the universe is vast, but how do we measure the distances between things?
Dave Scrimshaw.
Let’s talk numbers for a moment.
The moon is approximately 384,000 kilometres away, and the sun is approximately 150 million kilometres away. The mean distance between Earth and the sun is known as the…
Finding quasars will help us understand how galaxies were formed.
NASA
Today, the University of Melbourne’s Professor Stuart Wyithe was awarded the 2011 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year for his work on the origin of galaxies.
The multi-award winning…
Stars are immense, but the space between them is truly phenomenal.
chefranden
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
Douglas Adams…
Science follows certain procedures, but does the media get the signal?
CSIRO
Recently my colleagues and I announced the discovery of a remarkable planet orbiting a special kind of star known as a pulsar.
Based on the planet’s density, and the likely history of its system, we concluded…
Stars shine, for sure, but PSR J1719-1438 is sporting some serious bling.
Robyn Beck/AFP
A planet has been found in our Milky Way galaxy that may be made entirely of diamond.
As reported in Science today, an international astronomy team led by Swinburne University’s Matthew Bailes, has discovered…
Warning: you may struggle to believe what you're about to read.
Bluedharma
Just how big are the stars?
Earth feels quite big, what with it taking an entire day to fly between Sydney and London, and clearly the sun and moon are quite large in the sky.
But with virtually everything…
We may finally have an answer to a long-standing cosmic/ cosmetic issue.
NASA
As of today, we have a cataclysmic new explanation for one of solar system astronomy’s most long-standing questions: why do the near- and far-sides of the Moon look so different?
This new theory, published…
The vertical motion of the asteroid (in green) relative to Earth over several years.
Paul Wiegert, University of Western Ontario
This morning, the discovery of Earth’s first Trojan companion was announced by a group of Canadian astronomers.
The object in question, 2010 TK7, is a lump of rock just a few hundred metres across, and…
We still have plenty to learn about our own galaxy.
Doug Klembara
Welcome to the third instalment of If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object.
Today we hear from…
Has NASA's 30-year space experiment been worth it?
EPA/NASA TV
All going well, the final Space Shuttle mission will be launched from the Kennedy Space Centre early on Saturday morning (AEST). This flight, being made by the Space Shuttle Atlantis, will be the 135th…
A computer-generated artists impression of the thousands of objects in orbit around Earth.
AFP
By Fred Watson, Australian Astronomical Observatory
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite in 1957 – the Soviet Union’s Sputnik 1 – countries around the world have been putting satellites and spacecraft into Earth orbit.
While the majority…
Is that a planet, a galaxy or a Rosetta Stone?
ichewmylips
A vital part of professional astronomy is collecting data using large telescopes. In many cases, these telescopes are national or international facilities, with time available to all through a competitive…
When a black hole devours a nearby star, bright gamma-ray flashes can result.
Mark Garlick (University of Warwick)
Some 3.8 billion years ago a star in the constellation of Draco wandered a little too close to a nearby black hole.
The star was violently torn apart by the black hole’s tidal forces, creating two massive…
Despite centuries of study and folklore, we're still not over the moon.
~BostonBill~
What do Chile’s recent volcanic eruptions and tomorrow morning’s total lunar eclipse have in common? Well …
Just before sunrise, Earth’s shadow will totally hide the normally-bright moon for about 100…
Theories suggesting lunar influence on earthquakes have serious cracks.
penguinbush
With a total lunar eclipse set to occur just before sunrise (AEST) on Thursday, we can expect to see certain views regurgitated about our moon. Our satellite has been the focus of speculation and folklore…
What tasty treats await astronomers in the next few decades?
Lea/Flickr
Predicting the future is a mug’s game.
When I reflect back on what we thought we knew at the start of my research career in the mid-1990s, I sound like a wizened octogenarian, recalling a simpler time…
You wouldn't believe what modern telescopes can do.
Professor Fumolatro/Flickr
Last week, scientists set a new distance record, seeing a burst of gamma-rays from a star that exploded when the universe was only 520 million years old. The light from this distant source has been travelling…
The universe teems with energy and matter we don't understand.
stuant63/Flickr
In questioning the fundamental nature of the universe, cosmology regularly grabs the public’s attention.
But in an era in which we are observing deeper and more widely than ever before, our knowledge…
Is it a plane? No, it's Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics.
William West/AFP
Watching films such as Superman Returns or The Day after Tomorrow, you would have seen dramatic sequences of surging water and crumbling buildings.
While doing so, mathematics was probably the last thing…
Is your stress from Venus, your pressure from Mars? Not likely.
Today, and for the next month, four major planets are aligned above us: Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter.
Are we interested? Of course we are.
From the very beginning of human history we’ve been obsessed…
There's something happening, but it's way above your head.
bluedharma/Flickr
Four planets – Mercury, Mars, Jupiter and Venus – will be aligned at dawn tomorrow. What does this mean? Should we be running for the hills?
You’d be forgiven for thinking so. A search on Google or YouTube…
Scientists believe dark matter makes up 23% of the universe.
NASA
By Jeremy Mould, Swinburne University of Technology
Dark matter has worked its way back into the news in the last few days with the completion of a detection experiment in a tunnel deep under the Italian Alps.
Researchers from Columbia University used…
Are CSIRO's ASKAP antennas in Boolardy a precursor to greater things?
By Ant Schinckel, CSIRO
We know a lot about what the universe looks like and how it works. But what we’ve been able to figure out about the cosmos is dwarfed by all the things we don’t know.
How do galaxies, stars and planets…
Viewed from afar, the Milky Way might appear similar to the galaxy known as NGC 7331.
R. Jay GaBany/NASA
Where are we within our galaxy? How did our galaxy form? How did it evolve over the aeons?
Astronomers have been asking these questions for the past century, and have recently begun discerning the answers…
Hundreds of exoplanets have been discovered, but are we any closer to finding life?
AAP
In the late 1980s, when I was a young whipper-snapper just starting out as an astronomer, it was quite obvious some fields had an incredibly high profile and others were outré.
The sexy ideas at the time…
It is inevitable that we will one day venture into space beyond the moon not just with robots but in person.
Exploration is part of the human psyche: we are risk-takers with an insatiable curiosity. No…
