How to Build a Big Star
Cambridge, MA
The most massive stars in our galaxy weigh as much as 100 small stars like the Sun. How do such monsters form? Do they grow rapidly by swallowing smaller protostars within ...
Fastest Pulsar Speeding Out of Galaxy, Astronomers Discover
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Cambridge, MA
A speeding, superdense neutron star somehow got a powerful "kick" that is propelling it completely out of our Milky Way Galaxy into the cold vastness of intergalactic space...
Rain Extinguishes Arizona Fire
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Cambridge, MA
Mother Nature has ended what she began 12 days ago. A forest fire sparked by lightning in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson, Arizona, which spread to within a mile o...
Astronomers Debate Whether Oldest Known Dust Disk Will Ever Form Planets
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Cambridge, MA
Every rule has an exception. One rule in astronomy, supported by considerable evidence, states that dust disks around newborn stars disappear in a few million years. Most l...
Forest Fire Threatens Whipple Observatory
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Cambridge, MA
A forest fire sparked by lightning more than a week ago currently is located less than a mile from the Smithsonian's Whipple Observatory. More than 20,000 acres have burned...
Deep Impact Was a Dust-up, Not a Gusher
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Cambridge, MA
Smithsonian astronomers watched as the "Impactor" probe from NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft hit Comet Tempel 1 earlier this week. They monitored the impact using the ground-...
Hibernating Spacecraft Awakens for Comet Impact Mission
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Cambridge, MA
The Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) has been asleep on orbit for the past 11 months. SWAS operators placed it into hibernation after a highly successful 5.5-y...
Detour: Planetary Construction Zone Ahead
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Cambridge, MA
Interstellar travelers might want to detour around the star system TW Hydrae to avoid a messy planetary construction site. Astronomer David Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonia...
Giovanni Fazio Receives Prestigious NASA Award
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Cambridge, MA
Giovanni Fazio, a senior physicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and lecturer in the Astronomy Department, Harvard University, has been awarded NASA's presti...
Observing the Solar System in Submillimeter Wavelengths
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Cambridge, MA
Getting Ready to Fingerprint a CometThe Submillimeter Array (SMA) will be ready and watching when NASA's Deep Impact probe strikes the nucleus of Comet Tempel 1 on July 4th...