NGC 6143 (also IRAS 16205+5512, MCG 9-27-24, UGC 10358 and PGC 57919) is a magnitude +13.1 face-on spiral galaxy located 244 million light-years away in the constellation Draco. The galaxy was discovered by German-British astronomer William Herschel using a 45.72 cm (18 inch) f/13 speculum refl...
William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564; died 23 April 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. Read more
The 130 - 280 metre wide asteroid 2014 BR43 will make a close pass (55.1 lunar distances, 0.1416 AU), travelling at 5.48 km/second, to the Earth-Moon system on the 24th April, 2014 @ 18:54 UT ±00:01. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distance between Earth and the Moon, equals 384,401 km, (or 0.002...
Chlorophyll in ancient bacteria: biofuel source? Scientists have discovered a new type of chlorophyll in ancient Australian bacteria that could lead to new sources of bio-energy. Over the past 60 years, scientists have known of four types of chlorophyll used by plants to harvest light and conver...
Title: HD 285507b: An Eccentric Hot Jupiter in the Hyades Open Cluster Author: S. N. Quinn (1 and 4), R. J. White (1), D. W. Latham (2), L. A. Buchhave (2 and 3), G. Torres (2), R. P. Stefanik (2), P. Berlind (2), A. Bieryla (2), M. C. Calkins (2), G. A. Esquerdo (2), G. Fürész (2), J. C. Geary (2), A. H. Szentg...
Title: RCW 86: A Type Ia Supernova in a Wind-Blown Bubble Authors: Brian J. Williams, William P. Blair, John M. Blondin, Kazimierz J. Borkowski, Parviz Ghavamian, Knox S. Long, John C. Raymond, Stephen P. Reynolds, Jeonghee Rho, P. Frank Winkler We report results from a multi-wavelength analysis...
Astronomers have spotted the most distant object yet confirmed in the universe a self-destructing star that exploded 13.1 billion light years from Earth. It detonated just 640 million years after the big bang, around the end of the cosmic "dark ages", when the first stars and galaxies w...
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, ForMemRS, (April 23, 1858 - October 4, 1947) was a German physicist who discovered quantum physics, initiating a revolution in natural science and philosophy. He is regarded as the founder of quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Rea...
A pair of supermassive black holes in orbit around one another have been spotted by XMM-Newton. This is the first time such a pair have been seen in an ordinary galaxy. They were discovered because they ripped apart a star when the space observatory happened to be looking in their direction. Read more...
The Pi Puppids are a meteor shower associated with the comet 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup. The meteor stream was viewable around April 23 but only in years around the parent comet's perihelion date, the last being in 2003. Read more
NGC 3501 (also MCG 3-28-51, UGC 6116 and PGC 33343) is a magnitude +12.9 edge-on spiral galaxy located 52 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. The galaxy was discovered by French astronomer Edouard Stephan using a 80.01 cm (31.5 inch) reflector at the Marseille Observatory on the 23...
NGC 4807 (also MCG 5-31-6, UGC 8049 and PGC 44037) is a magnitude +13.4 elliptical galaxy located 321 million light-years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. The galaxy was discovered by German-Danish astronomer Heinrich Louis d'Arrest using a 27.94 cm (11 inch) f/17.5 Merz-Refractor at t...