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The Most Distant Galaxy Super Cluster

Galaxies are usually found as members of clusters. Rich clusters can have thousands of members and poor clusters may have only dozens of galaxies. The clustering of galaxies is an important constraint on cosmological models and the degree of clustering in the Universe today is related to the anisotropies in the matter distribution of the early universe.

New Types of Supernovae

Supernovae - stars that explode completely? - come in an ever more bewildering variety. They were originally classified by their spectra rather by any understanding of what was actually happening, but we now know that they come in two basic varieties. Spectral Type Ia explosions are the complete thermonuclear detonation of a carbon-rich white-dwarf star that becomes overloaded with more than 1.4 solar masses of material.

The Ogopogo

Hidden treasures and lost cities are often a sparkling targets to bounty hunters. Now it seems mythical beasts are also the object of bounty hunters' affections. Between August 2000 and September 2001three companies from around Lake Okanegan promised $2 million to anyone who could find definitive, living proof that the fabled Ogopogo monster did exist.

The Beast of Bodmin Mystery

The Beast of Bodmin, also known as "the Beast of Bodmin Moor" like "the Beast of Exmoor", is a phantom wild cat which is claimed to range in Cornwall in the United Kingdom. Bodmin Moor became a centre of these sightings with frequent reports of crippled slain livestock: the alleged panther-like cats of the same region came to be popularly known as the Beast of Bodmin Moor.

The Unstable Crab Nebula

History

On the 4th of July 1054 or maybe even earlier, in April or May that year, a new bright star near the Sun was observed in the constellation of Taurus by witnesses in Italy, Armenia, Iraq, China, Japan, and North America. The unusual object appeared with a magnitude between –4 and –7.5 and was visible to the naked eye, even in the daytime sky. Apparently, maximum brightness coincided with the solar conjunction. Chinese astronomers observed the star in daylight until the 27th of July 1054, and they were able to see it in the night sky until the 17th of April 1056, before it faded from naked-eye visibility. In Europe, sightings of the supernova were probably censored, since the catholic church saw this celestial event as a bad omen in connection with the split from the orthodox church in the same year.

Kepler's Latest Hunting Trips

Torrents of likely new exoplanets are pouring in from NASA's Kepler space telescope - more than 1,200 of them so far, large and small, including weird worlds and systems that no one expected. The Kepler science team unveiled its latest batch of findings on February 2nd, based largely on data from just the first four months (May 12 to Sept. 17, 2009) of Kepler's planned 3½-year mission. The Kepler scientists highlighted two themes. One was the sheer number and variety of likely planets being found, especially small ones, including several small ones in their stars' habitable zones. The team also highlighted one system in particular. A 14th-magnitude star dubbed Kepler-11 seems to have six super-earths and Neptunes transiting it. All are orbiting in nearly the same plane, five of them in compactly nested orbits closer to the star than Mercury is to the Sun. Two or three of these planets have such unexpectedly low average densities that they would float in water.

Listening to black holes

The lowest note ever produced in the universe is B flat !

Ever wondered what a black hole "sounds" like? As NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope recently discovered, is B flat.

Unfortunately there's no way of listening to it because the note is 57 octaves below middle C.

That's a million billion times lower than the limit of human hearing, making it the deepest note that's ever been detected in the universe.

The Hunt For New Planets

The Extra Terrestrial Planets

They have been among the hottest things in astronomy for more than a decade. But let's face it. Giant Jupiters, fried Neptunes, inflated fat Saturns, pairs of giants in resonant orbits - these are just lead-ups to the main act. What we really need to know about are Exo-Earths. By an "Earth," astronomers generally mean a planet that's small enough to have a solid, rocky surface but big enough to hold a considerable atmosphere, and maybe with the possibility of "liquid" water. In other words, a place where life as we know it might arise and remains. Perhaps even, with a lot of luck, a place where humans could someday walk around on it's surface with nothing more than an oxygen tube, or even without.