How to predict solar flares
Richard Canfield and David McKenzie from Montana State University in the US, and Hugh Hudson from the Solar Physics Research Corporation in Japan, analysed two years worth of images from the X-ray sat...
Hubble upsets star-formation theories
The stellar history of local galaxies is calculated by plotting the different size and brightness of stars in the target galaxy. However, when viewed from Earth, star systems and star clusters can som...
Gamma-ray bursts spring more surprises
There are a number of reasons why GRB980425 is associated with SN1998bw. Both occurred at the same time, at the same location and in the same direction as each other. SN1998bw is also a rare Type Ib/c...
Scientists hail SOHO
“This is the best news I’ve heard since we lost contact with SOHO” says Roger Bonnet, ESA’s director of science. “We should just hope that the damage sustained by SOHO...
Radar finds SOHO
Attempts to locate the satellite with NASA’s Deep Space Network had been unsuccessful. However, by bouncing radio waves from the Arecibo observatory in Puerto Rico off the satellite, and detecti...
Black hole alert for astronomers
When a star explodes as a supernova, the remnants of the explosion can fall inwards to form a neutron star or a black hole. Neutron stars are easy to detect because they emit powerful radio waves. Bla...
Birth of a black hole
The event is unusual in that the star appears to have been heavy enough – possibly 100 times the mass of the Sun – to collapse back on itself and form a black hole instead of completely bl...
US Energy Secretary resigns
During his term in office Peña has promoted management reforms across the department and increased transparency at the national labs. Peña’s involvement in promoting awareness of the g...
Fast spinning pulsar
Frank Marshall, Will Zhang and Eric Gotthelf from the Goddard Space Flight Center, and John Middleditch of Los Alamos National Laboratory found the star by studying data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray ...
