Astronomers Release the Largest Ever Three-Dimensional Map of the Sky

Cambridge, MA - The Sloan Digital Sky Survey III (SDSS-III) has released the largest three-dimensional map of massive galaxies and distant black holes ever created. The new map pinpoints the locations and distances of over a million galaxies. It covers a full volume equivalent to that of a cube four billion light-years on a side.

Hill, one of the most famous craters of the moon can be 5 to 10% water ice

The new approximation of the amount of water ice led to radar Mini-RF, on board the American "moon" of the probe LRO. The focus, as in many similar studies, focused on the Moon's south pole, where the deep crater Shackleton . These places are the most promising for the construction of this permanent manned base on the edge of the crater found a lovely flat landing area, and located very near to the "peak of eternal light", where the sun shines constantly, it would be convenient to install solar panels.

Sweet space: sugar from STAR

In a cloud of gas and dust around young stars are found far monosaccharides. The simplest the "building blocks of life" - exactly the right time and the right place to be on the planet-forming.

Binary star IRAS 16293-2422 is not so far, only 400 light-years from Earth in the gas and dust cloud surrounding the Rho Ophiuchi. Her entourage Danish astronomer Jess Jorgensen (Jes Jorgensen) and colleagues observed in the infrared, with the observatory  ALMA , revealed traces  glikolaldegida .

Discovered another planet, which can have a life,

Gliese 163 c is classified as “sverhzemel "stone the size of the planets in our not too big: it is estimated minimum mass of 6.9 Earth. It rotate around a red dwarf star, making a complete rotation every 26 Earth days. Distance away from the star is about 50 light-years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado.

A star cluster has a secret

The ESO La Silla Observatory in Chile shows the stunning globular star cluster Messier 4. This group consists of tens of thousands of antique stars is one of the closest and one of the most studied globular clusters. Recent research has exposed that one of its stars has unusual and surprising properties; apparently it is the secret of eternal youth.

Seeing the Birth of the Universe in an Atom of Hydrogen

Stars can unveil the history of our universe, Currently Estimated to be 14 billion years old. The beyond away the star, the older it is - and the oldest stars are the most difficult to detect. Current telescopes can only see galaxies About 700 million years old, and Only When the galaxy is unusually large or as the result of a big event like a stellar explosion.

Now, an international team of scientists led by researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a method for detecting galaxies of stars That Formed When the universe was in its infancy,

Multi-tasking Supernova: stellar explosion galaxy far-off

Nature hath no fury like a dying star - and astronomers could not be happier...

An international research team, led by Edo Berger of Harvard University, made the most of a dying star's passion to probe a distant galaxy some 9.5 billion light-years distant. The dying star, which lit the galactic scene, is the MOST distant stellar explosion of its kind ever Studied. According To Berger, "It's like someone turned on a flashlight in a dark room and allowed us to see suddenly, for a short time, what this far-off galaxy looks like, what it is composed of."