A NASA space telescope using Italian technology has discovered an interstellar ''engine'' bombarding the Earth with cosmic rays, scientists said Thursday. Launched in June 2008, the Fermi telescope has found the first evidence for a long-held theory that the shells of energy and matter left behind by stellar explosions serve as accelerators for the high-energy particles that make up cosmic rays. Read more
Monash University-led research has revealed the magnetic field at the Milky Way's core is at least 10 times stronger compared to the rest of the galaxy. The discovery was made by a team of astrophysicists from Monash University, Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics, the University of Adelaide, and the University of Arizona in the United States. Lead-author Dr Roland Crocker said the findings would change the way the scientists measure galaxies. Read more
Scientists have mapped the shape of the dark matter that is surrounding our home galaxy, the Milky Way. According to their research, the Milky Way is sitting in a clump of dark matter that resembles a gigantic flattened beach ball. One astrophysicist says dark matter accounts for more than 70 percent of the mass in galaxies like ours.
An international research project involving the University of Adelaide has revealed that the magnetic field in the centre of the Milky Way is at least 10 times stronger than the rest of the Galaxy. The evidence is significant because it gives astronomers a lower limit on the magnetic field, an important factor in calculating a whole range of astronomical data. Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany, the University of Adelaide, Monash University and the United States have published their findings in Nature this week. Read more
The cloud of dark matter that is thought to surround the Milky Way may be shaped like a squashed beach ball. This halo of invisible matter also seems to sit at an unexpected angle - which could be a strike against a theory that challenges Einstein's account of gravity. Dark matter is the stuff cosmologists invoke to explain why there appears to be far less mass in the universe than they think there should be. If they're right, the Milky Way is embedded in a vast halo of the stuff that is roughly 10 times as massive as all the galaxy's stars and gas combined. But the exact shape of this halo - which could bear traces of the collisions that built the galaxy - is still unknown. Read more
The Milky Way is revealed as tightly wound "grand design" two-armed spiral - not a four-armed spiral as has previously been supposed. Independent mathematician Charles Francis of Hastings, U.K., and amateur astronomer Erik Anderson of Ashland, Oregon, had been working on a quite different problem when the discovery was made. Read more
Every Star in the Sky, in One Picture Axel Mellinger says that by the age of 12, he was in love with night. Two years ago he went on a mission. He set out to create a massive photographic panorama of all the stars in the night sky. He is now finished -- having created an image with something like 25 million stars in it.
So-called tramp stars, flung from their galaxies in past gravitational interactions, could exist in great numbers outside the Milky Way Galaxy
Columbia University graduate student Maureen Teyssier, along with Shara and Columbia astronomy professor Kathryn Johnston, unpack in the December 10 issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters some of the mechanisms by which stars can be ejected from their home galaxies to become tramps - wandering or even escaped stars. Wanderers roam deep into space but remain loosely bound to a galaxy, whereas escapees are thrown clear to travel through space on their own. Read more
