Stunning Image of New Stellar Birth

Recently, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has taken an image of new stars forming about 140,000 light years from the center of the galaxy known as M83.
This galaxy is also known as the southern pinwheel galaxy.

"It is absolutely stunning that we find such an enormous number of young stars up to 140,000 light-years away from the center of M83," said Frank Bigiel of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, lead investigator of the new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations.
Even with our current technology, it is still hard to observe the beginning of star formation. This new discovery really helps astronomers and scientists to understand what exactly happens when stars form.
Astronomers speculate that the young stars seen far out in M83 could have formed under conditions resembling those of the early universe, a time when space was not yet enriched with dust and heavier elements.
This galaxy, M83, is located 15 million light years away in the constellation of Hydra.
You can find more information about this and the new images here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex-20080416.html

Dark Side of the moon to see the beginning of the Universe

Why should we build a giant telescope on the back of the moon? Well, it seems that the dark side of the moon is the only place that human interference has left untouched that also happens to be near us.

The "dark ages" of astronomy refer to a time before stars existed, when clouds of ionized gas cooled as the Universe expanded. During that time, there wa a faint noise that came from hydrogen atoms doing spin-flips, which gives off radio-wavelength signals that astronomers can pick up on.
Kurt Weiler, senior astronomer at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory says, ""What happens is that because of the Big Bang there's a background glow. The spin-flip will absorb the glow of the older material and will give us a signature that we can see."

However, this signals are very faint, and can easily be masked by Earth transmissions in the same wavelength. There are now plans to build the Dark Ages Lunar Interferometer, which would be made up of over 100 thousand antennas. The only problem is getting this telescope to the moon, and making it survive the conditions on the Moon.

As plans continue, perhaps this telescope will be feasible. Scientists are now testing a film called polyimide to see if it might work. Finding out about the origins of the Universe will realize a dream that many astronomers had before anyone ever explored the moon. Maybe, just maybe, we'll finally truly know how exactly the the universe start.

Prior to the Big Bang: New Theory

Many have wondered what happened before the Big Bang. Now, it's not just a simple religious answer. A new theory has sprung up, called the Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG). This theory suggests the possibility of our universe having formed following the collapse of another Universe;a "quantum bounce".

Alejandro Corichi from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and Parampreet Singh from the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario have developed a simplified LQG model that shows what could have existed before the big bang.
Earlier research has been done but there are some major differences.
Before now, a simplified LQG was used where it was thought that nothing was preserved after the quantum bounce, therefore we could find out nothing about the earlier universe from studying our own.

However, Singh and Corichi modified the simplified form of LQG by adding a key equation called the quantum constraint, which showed that some things like the laws of physics would be retained.
Thus, they believe that if looked at from far away, it would look almost exactly like our own universe. However, just like identical twins could have slight DNA discrepancies or different fingerprints, the universes would also have slight differences.

There are still many questions, such as whether or not the previous galaxies have left imprints on the way the new galaxies have formed. Perhaps they formed in a different way in the previous universe.
Corichi and Singh's model could possibly tell us what the next universe will look like. It may even follow, that this model will predict a collapse of our own universe.

Amazing Record-Breaking Explosion Seen by Hubble

A star seen by the Hubble about 7.5 billion light years away (about halfway back to the Big Bang), was, for almost a minute, as bright as 10 million galaxies.
The Hubble Space Telescope has taken the picture of the now fading visible light part of an extremely powerful gamma ray burst that holds the record for being the brightest object ever seen from Earth with just the naked eye.
This star erupted in a tremendous flash of gamma rays and other electromagnetic radiation at 2:12 a.m. EDT on March 19, and was detected by NASA's gamma ray burst watchdog satellite called Swift.

This explosion has been named GRB 080319B and was in the constellation Bootes. Astronomers had hoped to see the galaxy where this star had originated from, but it appears that the light from the explosion is still drowning out the light of the galaxy.
From patterns seen before, astronomers thought that bright bursts usually fade faster. However, this explosion was different in that it took a long time to fade. Thus, astronomers now wonder what was able to power this tremendous explosion.
These massive explosions are thought to be caused by incredibly large stars with about 50 times the weight of our own Sun. The theory behind the incredible light emanating from them is that these "hypernovae" emit a sort of concentrated beam aimed, in this case, directly at Earth.

If you want to see some images or more information, go here: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/17

Coldest Brown dwarf star

A new brown dwarf star has been discovered that is the coldest yet. Brown dwarf stars are usually less than 70 time Jupiter's mass. Normal stars spend most of their time burning hydrogen and maintaining a standard internal temperature. However, brown dwarfs usually spend their time getting colder. Brown dwarf stars were first discovered in 1995 and many more have been discovered since then.
This brown dwarf star, CFBDS J005910.83-011401.3, is about 40 light years away from our solar system. It was discovered by an international team that used the Canadian France Hawaii telescope, the Gemini North telescope (both of which reside in Hawaii), and European Southern Observatory telescope in Chile.l
What are brown dwarf stars? Well, they are similar to very large planets but they have their differences. One for example, is that while water is condensed into ice on most giant planets, it is always gaseous on brown dwarf stars. Ammonia has never been found in their atmospheres either, while it makes up a large amount of Jupiter's atmosphere. Similarities include clouds of dust and aerosol, along with large amounts of methane in the atmospheres.

However, this newly discovered brown dwarf has different properties than either of the existing classes of brown dwarf stars: L and T. L dwarfs have temperatures from 1,200 - 2000 Celsius while T dwarfs have less than 1,200 Celsius.
This new dwarf has even lower temperatures and even has ammonia. In this manner, it is much more like a humongous planet than any other discovery. Researchers now propose that they call this new class Y dwarfs.
Scientists hope to use these discoveries to learn more about planetary formation and extrasolar planets, as planets are usually bound to a star and are harder to observe than brown dwarf stars that are not attached.