Read article 'Galactic record set'
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have discovered the most distant, and therefore the youngest, object ever observed. The galaxy existed when the universe was only 5% of its present age (re...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Water, water everywhere The third mission in NASA’s small explorer programme was launched last December. The Submillimetre-Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) is designed to study the chemical compo...
Read article 'The quintessence of cosmology'
The most striking recent development in cosmology has come from supernova studies, which reveal how the expansion rate of the universe changes with time. Rather than slowing down, the universe is ex...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Gamma-ray bursts The most powerful objects in the universe are also the most mysterious. Gamma-ray bursts can emit more energy in a few seconds than all of the 1011 stars in our galaxy emit over a few...
Read article 'Tantalum detector'
A new development in detector technology is good news for astronomers.
Read article 'Astrowatch'
ESO update The first 8.2 m telescope of the Very Large Telescope array opens to astronomers on 1 April. It has already made interesting discoveries during its commisioning stage. Observations of one o...
Read article 'Gas reveals secrets of universe evolution'
New observations using the ROSAT X-ray telescope endorse a “bottom-up” model of the evolution of the universe. Most ordinary matter in the universe is in the hot gas that makes up the inte...
Read article 'Astrowatch'
Stars seeing stars Subaru, a new Japanese telescope, saw first light in January. It joins the UK infrared telescope, the Dutch, UK and Canadian James Clerk Maxwell Telescope and the US Keck Observator...
Read article 'The quest for gravitational waves'
The gravitational waves emitted by accelerated masses were predicted by Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity as long ago as 1916, but so far remain undetected.
Read article 'The case of the missing neutron stars'
Certain heavy stars at the end of their lives collapse in the most violent explosions known in the universe supernovae.
