* Dave Finley of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory says that future generations will call today the "Golden Era of Astronomy." Why might this be?
"The era of gravitational wave astronomy is upon us," says astronomer Scott Ransom of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va., who is not involved with LIGO.
3.5-meter 1994
National Radio Astronomy Observatory 15.
Amy Reines, of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), said that the little galaxies hold the clues to the origin of the first 'seeds' of supermassive black holes in the early universe.
The infant star surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas is more than 450 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory reported Wednesday.
"It looks as if the black holes came first," said Dr Chris Carilli, from the US
National Radio Astronomy Observatory. "The evidence is piling up."
Using radiotelescopes--instruments that pick up invisible electromagnetic energy waves emitted by some stars--astronomers at PennSylvania State University and the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Socorro, New Mexico, detected disturbances around a distant pulsar.
"This is the first use of ALMA to make such a measurement for a spiral or barred spiral galaxy," said Kartik Sheth, an astronomer with the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Charlottesville, Va., and co-author on the paper.
When it does, it could deliver extragalactic material, said Jay Lockman of the
National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Lockman and colleagues used the Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia to compare the Smith Cloud with others near the galaxy and seven massive clouds that sit between the Andromeda and Triangulum galaxies.
Joan Wrobel (
National Radio Astronomy Observatory) and colleagues took a second look at the system, using data they had collected over a few years from the Very Long Baseline Array.