A meteor was seen passing over Israel Tuesday night in many parts of the country. Ynet was flooded with calls from citizens residing in central Israel, the Sharon region, Jerusalem and the Krayot cities who reported seeing the object crossing the sky at approximately 8:15 pm. Some witnesses said th...
While there are plenty of stars shining on stage at the Williamstown Theatre Festival this summer, even bigger stars are appearing twice weekly in a much more intimate setting. And these stars are millions if not billions of years old. Inside the Hopkins Observatory on the Williams College campus j...
The drifting station research unit 'North Pole-35' at 81.26 north latitude, 103.30 east longitude. was set up in the Arctic on Friday. "The research unit will begin work by sending the first weather-report to the Global Weather Network" - Sergei Balyasnikov, a spokesman for the Arct...
ESA's Aurora Space Exploration Programme invites proposals for the Next Exploration Science and Technology (NEXT) mission. Envisaged for launch in the period 2015-2018, the technological goal of NEXT is to demonstrate key enabling capabilities, such as descent and precision landing, as...
The Fortingall yew is claimed to be oldest living thing in Europe. Botanists estimate the tree to be about 5,000 years old. Located in a church yard in Perthshire near Glen Lyon, the yew tree is enclosed by a stone wall built in 1785 to keep tourists from taking home any more clippings as souvenirs. The y...
Pendarves Quoit, also known as Carwynnen Quoit, is a Bronze Age Burial Chamber located in West Cornwall (England). The site is in a collapsed condition and stands on private setaside farmland. The Sustainable Trust is in negotiations with the owners to buy the five acres of land on which the Quoit is...
Title: Reconstructing the Guitar: Blowing Bubbles with a Pulsar Bow Shock Back Flow Authors: Marten H. van Kerkwijk (Toronto), Ashleigh Ingle (Toronto) The Guitar Nebula is an H-alpha nebula produced by the interaction of the relativistic wind of a very fast pulsar, PSR B2224+65, with the inters...
The first thing an alien race is likely to hear from Earth is chirps and whistles, a bit like R2-D2, the robot from Star Wars. In reality, they are the sounds that accompany the aurora. Now ESAs Cluster mission is showing scientists how to understand this emission and, in the future, search for alien wo...
Israel's military has launched a spy satellite towards space, the defence ministry said, and a senior official has suggested that it could be used to spy on Iran. The satellite weighs 30kg, is 2.3m long and will operate for at least four years, Israel Radio reported. The launch was carried out at 2:40...
A bright meteor was spotted over the west coast of New Zealand on Wednesday night, causing a flurry of calls to police. The meteor was seen from from Westport to Wanganui, about 11pm. Astronomers say the sightings were of just one meteor, believed to be the size of a softball. [url=http://www.radion...
Title: A Three-Decade Outburst of the LMC Luminous Blue Variable R127 Draws to a Close Authors: Nolan R. Walborn (Space Telescope Science Institute), Otmar Stahl (ZAH, Landessternwarte Konigstuhl), Roberto C. Gamen (Complejo Astronomico El Leoncito, CONICET), Thomas Szeifert (European Sou...
Title: Unveiling a Compact Cluster of Massive and Young Stars in IRAS 17233-3606 Authors: Luis A. Zapata (MPIfR) Silvia Leurini (ESO) Karl M. Menten (MPIfR) Peter Schilke (MPIfR) Rainer Rolffs (MPIfR) Carolin Hieret (MPIfR) We have analysed sensitive high spatial resolution archival radio con...
Title: The very massive X-ray bright binary system Wack 2134 (= WR 21a) Authors: V.S. Niemela, R.C. Gamen, R.H. Barba, E. Fernandez Lajus, P. Benaglia, G.R. Solivella, P. Reig, M.J. Coe From the radial velocities of the N IV 4058 and He II 4686 emission lines, and the N V 4604-20 absorption lines, dete...
Far out in the Atlantic, a little yellow submarine is trying to slip from current to current, gliding across the ocean beneath the waves. The unmanned sub is nearing the halfway mark in its effort to travel from New Jersey to Spain, collecting scientific data along the way. [url=http://www.thenews...
