The Kepler observatory has discovered two new planets like Saturn orbiting a star and a third possible candidate with an approximate size to Earth, NASA announced.

This is the first time that the probe, with its complex systems, captures more of a transiting planet around a star. According to scientists, this finding will better understand the origin and evolution of planets from the calculations of density, mass and temperature, and analysis of the interaction of two bodies between them and their star.

The two planets have been named as Kepler 9b and Kepler 9c, and orbit at a distance of 2,000 light years from Earth. Its composition is similar to that of Saturn because they are composed of gas, possibly hydrogen and helium, as explained in a conference call the director of the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University, Matthew Holman. The expert and his team analyzed seven months of data of 156,000 stars sent by the powerful telescope, which in its first year of life discovered five planetary bodies beyond the solar system, called exoplanets. (more…)

The new generation of adaptive viewpoint has arrived at the telescope LBT in Arizona, providing the astronomers a new image clarity level never before seen.

Developed in the framework of collaboration between the Arcetri Observatory (under the National Institute for Astrophysics), Italy, and Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, this technology represents a significant step forward for astronomy.

The LBT, with its two 8.4-meter mirrors, is the largest optical telescope in the world. The telescope is collaboration between institutions in the USA, Italy and Germany. (more…)

The ability to scan planets in other solar systems is growing. The new achievement in the race of progress is the observation of the stormy atmosphere of a planet located 150 light-years from Earth, which has detected the existence of strong winds on it.

A team of astronomers from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, the Institute of Space Research of the nation, and MIT (U.S.) has become the first to measure the wind in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. By detecting the strong winds in HD209458b, a planet that has a little more than half the mass of Jupiter, the researchers could measure the motion of the planet to orbit around its star, which is also another milestone never before achieved in exoplanet research. (more…)

Astronomers have glimpsed what may be the youngest star known as it seems to be right in its birth process. The star has not fully developed as a star, but in the early stages of star formation and has recently begun to absorb matter from its envelope of gas and dust, according to new study.

The study’s authors, who include astronomers from Yale University, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and the Center for Astrophysics, jointly run by Harvard University and Smithsonian Institution, found the object through the Sub-millimeter Observatory in Hawaii and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The star, known as L1448-IRS2E, is located in the region of star formation in Perseus, 800 light-years from Earth. (more…)

An international team of scientists led by Professor Donald Schneider of Pennsylvania State University, has announced the completion of an extensive survey in which these experts identified quasars exist in a quarter of the sky.

The team’s work is part of the SDSS. The full catalog includes 105,783 quasars, more than 96 percent of which was discovered in the framework of the SDSS.

Quasars are hundreds of times more luminous than our entire galaxy, despite this tremendous energy generated in very small, comparable in size to our solar system. (more…)

A team of scientists at University College London and the University of Cambridge has developed codes of machine learning, modeled on certain characteristics of the human brain, which can be used in computers to classify the galaxies with precision and efficiency remarkable.

Notably, the new method is so reliable that coincides with human classifications in more than 90 percent of the time.

There are thousands of millions of known galaxies in the universe. Most of them contain between ten million and a billion stars. The galaxies show a wide range of shapes, the elliptical and spirals from there until they have more irregular structures. Thanks to several monitoring projects on a large scale, it is getting photographed and mapped a large number of galaxies. (more…)

Certain trace data from a cosmic being made by NASA’s Swift satellite has helped a team of astronomers to solve a mystery raised some time ago. What is the reason why some black holes (a few percent of the known) originating from the emission of large amounts of energy?

Only about one percent of super-massive black holes exhibit this behavior. The new findings confirm that the black holes will light up when galaxies collide and the data can provide a clearer perspective on the future behavior of the central black hole of our galaxy, the Milky Way. (more…)

Astronomers have discovered in the Milky Way a lot of hitherto unknown regions where massive stars are forming. This discovery provides important new information on the structure of our galaxy and promises to provide new clues about its chemical composition. (more…)

A team of experts from the natural resources department at McGill University, the National Research Council of Canada, the University of Toronto and the SETI Institute has found that some methanotrophic bacteria survive in an unusual spring located on Axel Heiberg Island in the extreme Canadian North. (more…)

Researchers have been playing for the first time in complex three-dimensional computer simulations, asymmetries and accumulations of iron in rapid evolution of supernovae that were observed at the time. The simulations have been successfully recreating the explosion from milliseconds after the start of the outbreak until the disappearance of the star itself several hours later. (more…)