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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Andromeda galaxy just got bigger -- three times bigger, astronomers said on Monday. The galaxy is not actually expanding. But new measurements suggest that the nearest galaxy to our own Milky Way is three times broader than astronomers had thought. They now believe a thin sprinkling of stars once thought to be a halo is in fact part of Andromeda's main disk. That makes the spiral galaxy, so close to Earth that it appeared as a fuzzy blob to the ancients, more than 220,000 light-years across -- triple the previous estimate of 70,000 to 80,000 light-years....

An outcast star is zooming out of the Milky Way, the first ever seen escaping the galaxy, astronomers reported on Tuesday. The star is heading for the emptiness of intergalactic space after being ejected from the heart of the Milky Way following a close encounter with a black hole, said Warren Brown, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The outcast is going so fast -- over 1.5 million mph -- that astronomers believe it was lobbed out of the galaxy by the tremendous force of a black hole thought to sit at the Milky Way's center. That speed...

HONOLULU - Astronomers using a giant telescope atop a volcano have discovered a hot spot at the tip of Saturn's south pole. The infrared images captured by the Keck I telescope at the W.M. Keck Observatory atop Mauna Kea on the Big Island suggest a warm polar vortex — a large-scale weather pattern likened to a jet stream on Earth that occurs in the upper atmosphere. It's the first such hot vortex ever discovered in the solar system. The team of scientists say the images are the sharpest thermal views of Saturn ever taken from the ground. Their work will...

Camera scoops amazing Orion snaps Astronomers have produced some amazing pictures using a remarkable new instrument on the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope in Hawaii. The Wide Field Camera (WFCAM), built at the UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh, is the world's most powerful infrared survey camera. WFCAM was trained on a region of star formation in the Orion constellation about 1,500 light-years away. The stunning images cover an area of sky that was unobtainable before. "The ability to see such a large area at once, with state-of-the-art detectors, makes WFCAM the fastest infrared survey instrument in the world, bar none,"...

Astronomers chart asteroid threat The team will be tracking asteroids with high-performance telescopes A team of astronomers has stepped up a project which one day could help to preserve the Earth from annihilation. The team from Queen's University in Belfast is monitoring asteroids in space to see if they are on a collision course with our planet. Their crucial data will be fed into an international programme for protecting the Earth from any future impact. On average 30 to 40 Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) - asteroids or comets moving close to Earth - are found each month. High-performance telescopes More than...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

Earth almost put on impact alert By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers have revealed how they came within minutes of alerting the world to a potential asteroid strike last month. Some scientists believed on 13 January that a 30m object, later designated 2004 AS1, had a one-in-four chance of hitting the planet within 36 hours. It could have caused local devastation and the researchers contemplated a call to President Bush before new data finally showed there was no danger. The procedures for raising the alarm in such circumstances are now being revised. At the time, the...

Astronomers from Cardiff University, in Wales, and the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, Scotland, believe they have solved one of the long-standing mysteries of the Universe - the origins of cosmic dust. In the latest issue of the science journal Nature, they explain how they have found that some supernovae, or exploding stars, belch out huge quantities of this dust - a discovery which suggests that supernovae were responsible for producing the first solid particles in the Universe. Originally astronomers thought that dust was mostly made in the winds from cool, giant stars in the late stages of their lives. Cosmic dust...

<p>WASHINGTON - In ``Star Wars,'' Darth Vader rules the ``dark side'' of a fantasy universe. In real life, astronomers are exploring the ``dark side'' of our own universe. They find it a mystifying place.</p> <p>According to a batch of new reports published in a special ``Welcome to the Dark Side'' issue of the journal Science, most of the cosmos cannot be seen, even with the most powerful telescopes. All but a tiny fraction of creation consists of two exotic, invisible ingredients called ``dark energy'' and ``dark matter.''</p>

<p>PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - Astronomers have completed the most thorough high-resolution digital survey of the heavens and released its 5 million images on the Internet.</p> <p>The map of the sky took four years of observations and $40 million to complete. It contains an estimated 500 million celestial objects, mostly stars but also galaxies, asteroids and comets.</p>

Board: Shuttle Lost Parts Over Calif. SPACE CENTER, Houston - Space shuttle Columbia began losing pieces over the California coast well before it disintegrated over Texas, the accident investigation board reported Tuesday, finally confirming what astronomers and amateur skywatchers have been saying from Day One. But board member James Hallock, a physicist and chief of the Transportation Department's aviation safety division, said the fragments were probably so small they burned up before reaching the ground. He said the conclusion that the space shuttle was shedding pieces a full six minutes before it came apart over Texas was based on images...

There seems to be some dispute about the date of the first Christmas. Part of that has to do with the Gregorian calendar, which is the one we use. At one time, Greek months had three ten day weeks. This forced them to add a month or two now and then. The ancient Hebrews, who alternated 29 and 30 day months, had the same problem. Our hour and minute divisions go all the way back to Mesopotamia. Our 24 hour day comes from pharaonic Egypt. The names we use for days and months come to us from the classical Greek,...

Friday, 26 July, 2002, 13:08 GMT 14:08 UKAstronomers see comet break-up The fragments are strung out in space By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers in the Czech Republic and Hawaii have seen Comet 57P/du Toit-Neujmin-Delporte splinter into at least 19 fragments. Initial observation from the 1.2-metre (3.9-foot) telescope at Mount Palomar in California, US, on 11 July appeared to show a companion to the comet. Further work done the following day at the Klet Observatory in the Czech Republic then confirmed the comet had actually split apart. Pictures taken from Mauna Kea in Hawaii with the...

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Scientists searching the stars for aliens are convinced an E.T. is out there -- it's just that they haven't had the know-how to detect such a being. But now technological advances have opened the way for scientists to check millions of previously unknown star systems, dramatically increasing the chances of finding intelligent life in outer space in the next 25 years, the world's largest private extraterrestrial agency believes. "We're looking for needles in the haystack that is our galaxy, but there could be thousands of needles out there," Seth Shostak, the senior astronomer at California's non-profit Search...