Join our SkyWatch hosts for conversation highlighting news from the world of astronomy. Listen in via your computer or MP3 player as they bring the latest discoveries down to Earth. SkyWatch also includes HubbleWatch, a round-up of news from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
Share your thoughts about SkyWatch.
The universe’s mysterious dark matter gets a little more mysterious. And Hubble celebrates its 22nd birthday by showing off its keen vision, capturing an immense and detailed view of a nearby star-forming region.
Astronomers have suspected that a gigantic black hole resides at the center of our Milky Way galaxy for some time now, but they can’t say for sure. Now scientists are hoping to image this mysterious object with a world-wide array of radio telescopes.
What do extrasolar planet systems have to do with Earth weather? Perhaps a lot. The United Kingdom Met Office, which, handles the UK national weather service, has a research team looking at applying space-weather models to the Earth, Sun and our solar system. If the models can explain what is seen in other planetary systems, different from our own, then they can help us understand the physics that drives our weather and climate.
An asteroid known as 2012 DA14 was discovered in Feb 2012 and is on track for close swing by Earth in 2013. Many reports circulated about it hitting our planet, but that’s not going to happen. Astronomers are monitoring the asteroid for calculations on its future passes.
The existence of black holes has been known for some time, and it can seem like we know all about them. We know that individual, stellar-size black holes form at the end of a massive star’s life. We also know that supermassive black holes exist in the center of galaxies, and it is assumed that they form from the merger of medium-size black holes. Yet these medium-size objects have not been found. Now an x-ray telescope’s discovery suggests they do exist. New observations with the Hubble Space Telescope and the SWIFT telescope yield new clues.
Some strange, gigantic explosions, which seem to be fueled by fueled by solar energy, have been detected just above the surface of the planet Venus. These powerful explosions have also been detected in the past near Earth, Saturn and possibly Mars.
Although the concept of dark matter has been around for a long time, scientists aren’t really clear on what it is. Originally, scientists thought that dark matter was associated with and “stuck to” the luminous matter we see – stars, galaxies, clusters of galaxies and other groupings. But new observations confirm a suspicion that emerged a few years ago: dark matter does not always behave exactly like normal matter.
NASA is studying a plan for a “human-tended waypoint” near the Moon’s far side that could oversee robotic operations on the lunar surface — and be a jumping-off point for more complex missions.
PODCASTING is a way of making audio broadcasts of all kinds available on the Internet. Listeners can either hear the show via the Web site or subscribe to the podcast to download it to a portable MP3 player. Our SkyWatch podcasts are free.
Carol Christian
& Jim O'Leary