NASA Black Hole Probe to Hunt Galactic Hearts of Darkness. Black holes, neutron stars and supernova remnants won't be able to hide in the fog of space for much longer. NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission — which is due to launch sometime this spring, though the agency has yet to pin down a date — will pierce the dust and gas shrouding sources of high-energy X-rays, revealing many secrets they have long managed to conceal, scientists say. Although telescopes such as NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have probed the skies with X-rays before, these other instruments have focused on lower-energy bands.
"NuSTAR is going to be the first focusing high-energy X-ray telescope," said mission principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology. [Photos: NuSTAR, NASA's Black-Hole-Hunting Space Telescope] Extreme events. 2012 March 12 - The Scale of the Universe Interactive. Discover the cosmos!
Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 March 12 The Scale of the Universe - Interactive Flash Animation Credit & Copyright: Cary & Michael Huang. 2012 March 12 - The Scale of the Universe Interactive. Three New Planets and a Mystery Object Discovered Outside Our Solar System & Eberly College of Science. Click on image for high-resolution file.
Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by Alex Wolszczan, an Evan Pugh Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State, using the Hobby-Eberly Telescope. Penn State is a major partner in the design, construciton, and operation of this telescope, which is one of the largest in the world.
In 1992, Wolszczan became the first astronomer ever to discover planets outside our solar system. Credit: Marty Harris/McDonald Obs.