Astronomy News

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(NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) NASA scientists analyzing 30 years of satellite data have found that the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching Earth's surface has increased markedly over the last three decades. Most of the increase has occurred in the mid-and-high latitudes, and there's been little or no increase in tropical regions.

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(Goethe University Frankfurt) As reported last week in Houston, two most promising candidates for stardust have been identified. They were collected during NASA's Stardust mission. Since 2006 scientists are scanning samples for the needle in the haystack: dust particles from others parts of our galaxy that were carried to our solar system via the interstellar stream. Geoscientists of Frankfurt's Goethe-University helped to identify the chemical structure of the particles.

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(Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB)) It will be on board in 2012, when a Soyus-2 rocket carries an X-ray telescope into space to decode the nature of the universe's dark energy: an X-ray detector developed by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Its challenging task is to detect the weak X-rays from celestial bodies, without being disturbed by the visible and UV light from billions of stars.

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(American Museum of Natural History) New simulations show that as the gas cloud surrounding a massive star collapses, it forms dense filamentary structures that absorb the star's radiation when it passes through them. This makes heated nebulae flicker like a candle flame.