Spooky Nebulae: Ghosts, Snakes, Spiders and Cats Eyes
Nebulae run the full gamut of a star's life, from conception to death. Emission nebulae are stellar nurseries, in which stars and even planetary systems form.
Basic Space
Space and astrophysics research made simple
The Closest You'll Ever Get to Being in Space
Being a student of Imperial College has a few perks. Our campus is on the same road as three of the biggest museums in London: the Natural History Museum, the Victoria and Albert, and the Science Museum...
Blue stragglers formed by engulfing red giants
Unusual stars known as blue stragglers have been causing trouble for astronomers since they were first seen in 1953: they are hotter and brighter than they should be, and much younger too...
Light from starburst galaxies makes the best cosmic disinfectant
If you're reading this at night, look outside. Even in a city you'll be able to see a few stars, if it's not too cloudy and your eyes are up to it. If you're lucky, the view from your window or garden will include a whole host of stars...
In praise of the Tevatron
Tomorrow, the Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab will shut down. The end will be no song and dance: the accelerator operators will simply stop putting new protons and antiprotons into the machine...
Faster-than-light neutrinos show science in action
Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past 24 hours, you've probably heard about the neutrinos that turned up at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy a few nanoseconds earlier than they were supposed to, in a feat that would have required them to travel faster than the speed of light.The story has been covered by many news outlets already, and, while some headlines may have raised a few eyebrows, most of the coverage has been suitably cautious...
An impossible star?
In the beginning, the only elements that existed were hydrogen, helium and very small amounts of lithium. All of the other elements in the period table came later and, rather than forming out of the primordial soup of sub-atomic particles that existed shortly after the big bang, the elements from lithium up to and including iron, were made in the nuclear furnaces at the centres of stars...
For a realistic Milky Way simulation, just add clustered star formation
Judging by its starlight and gas content (as seen in the image above), Eris looks to be a near match for our own Milky Way galaxy — except that it exists only as a simulation inside a supercomputer...
Double checking our cosmic tape measure
In the late 90s there was a race going on between two astronomy collaborations. Both were on the verge of making a discovery that would change the field of cosmology forever, though they may not have realised it at the time...
Oxygen might be hiding behind grains of cosmic dust
We often think of outer space, the bit between stars, as a complete vacuum. The reality is that, while it is a better vacuum than any we can create on Earth, it is far from empty.
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