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snr0519 While astronomers have seen the debris from scores of exploded stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, it is often difficult to determine the timeline of the star’s demise. By studying the spectacular remains of a supernova in a neighboring galaxy using NASA telescopes, a team of astronomers has found enough clues to help wind back the clock. The supernova remnant called SNR 0519-69.0 (SNR 0519 for short) is the debris from an explosion of a white dwarf star. After reaching a critical mass, either by pulling matter from a companion star or merging with another white...

In an incredible world first, astrophysicists have detected multiple planets in another galaxy, ranging from masses as small as the Moon to ones as great as Jupiter. Given how difficult it is to find exoplanets even within our Milky Way galaxy, this is no mean feat. Researchers at the University of Oklahoma achieved this thanks to clever use of gravitational microlensing. The technique, first predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, has been used to find exoplanets within Milky Way, and it's the only known way of finding the smallest and most distant planets, thousands of light-years from Earth. As...

A recent study, published in the Astrophysical Journal, offers potential explanations for the appearance of a green blob near the galaxy's center, which appeared and disappeared within weeks. The main goal of the NuSTAR observations was to examine a supernova -- a huge star explosion. The green blob, known as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX...didn't appear during the first observation, but showed up during a second one 10 days later. Another space telescope, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, then looked again and found the object, ULX-4, had quickly disappeared. "Ten days is a really short amount of time for such a...

Armando Morales was a gang leader, drug dealer and a jailhouse snitch. But he was also a commanding, dynamic presence on the witness stand when he told jurors that his cellmate, Ingmar Guandique, confessed to the murder of Washington intern Chandra Levy. Jurors believed Morales, and prosecutors obtained a conviction against Guandique at his 2010 trial despite lacking a confession, witnesses or DNA evidence. They obtained a conviction even though everyone knew that police had initially suspected another man, former California congressman Gary Condit. But for the last five years, while Guandique was imprisoned on what was to have been...

... Lawyers for Ingmar Guandique and the government were scheduled Wednesday to begin three days of hearings. Guandique's lawyers say he was convicted on the basis of false or misleading testimony given by a one time cell mate and prosecutors knew or should have known the testimony was false and investigated the man further. ...

Explanation: Last January, telescopes in observatories around planet Earth were eagerly used to watch the rise of SN 2014J, a bright supernova in nearby galaxy M82. Still, the most important observations may have been from orbit where the Chandra X-ray Observatory saw nothing. Identified as a Type Ia supernova, the explosion of SN2014J was thought to be triggered by the buildup of mass on a white dwarf star steadily accreting material from a companion star. That model predicts X-rays would be generated when the supernova blastwave struck the material left surrounding the white dwarf. But no X-rays were seen from...

NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory has found a mysterious X-ray signal that astronomers are speculating could signal the presence of dark matter some 240 million light years away from Earth. A leading theory, NASA reports, is that the X-rays are a result of decaying "sterile neutrinos," which are particles that could potentially produce dark matter. Astronomers believe dark matter accounts for 85 percent of all matter in the universe, but dark matter does not emit or absorb light as does the "normal" matter in planets, stars, and galaxies, so its detection is much more difficult. NASA notes that normal matter may...

Conservatives in the Ohio House this week blocked a move widely viewed as an attempt by Governor John Kasich to set aside money he could later spend on Medicaid expansion without legislative approval. The version of House Bill 483 (HB 483) passed by the Ohio Senate included a last-minute change to move as much as $300 million in surplus state revenue to the state Medicaid Reserve Fund. Legislators feared this was an effort by the Kasich Administration to circumvent the General Assembly for spending on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion when an existing appropriation expires in mid-2015. ... Kasich, a Republican,...

The November 2010 testimony of Morales helped convict Ingmar Guandique, the man charged with killing Levy in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park in May 2001. Levy’s death occurred shortly before she was to return to her family’s Modesto, Calif., home, and her disappearance drew national attention following speculation and then revelations that she had been having an affair with then-Rep. Gary Condit. A former cellmate of Guandique, Morales testified that the younger inmate had confessed to him that he had killed Levy. Guandique was sentenced to 60 years following his conviction in 2010 on first-degree murder charges Guandique’s defense attorneys,...

WASHINGTON -- A judge has been holding secret hearings in the case of the man convicted in the 2001 killing of Chandra Levy, the latest twist in a high-profile murder that went unsolved for years and captivated the public because of the intern's romantic relationship with a California congressman. The meetings, held sporadically behind closed doors at the courthouse over the last several weeks, raise questions about what comes next in a criminal case that appeared resolved by the 2010 conviction of Ingmar Guandique. The illegal immigrant from El Salvador is now serving a 60-year prison sentence in Levy's death,...

Reprinted from ScienceDaily Magazine ...Source:             NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center Date Posted:    Thursday, August 01, 2002Web Address:   http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/08/020801080835.htm Chandra Discovers "Rivers Of Gravity" That Define Cosmic Landscape NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered part of an intergalactic web of hot gas and dark matter that contains most of the material in the universe. The hot gas, which appears to lie like a fog in channels carved by rivers of gravity, has been hidden from view since the time galaxies formed. "The Chandra observations, together with ultraviolet observations, are a major advance in our understanding of how the universe evolved over the last 10 billion...

Explanation: One of the last entries in Charles Messier's famous catalog, big, beautiful spiral galaxy M101 is definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed with Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. In contrast, this mulitwavelength view of the large island universe is a composite of images recorded by space-based telescopes in the 21st century. Color coded From X-rays to infrared wavelengths (high to low energies), the image data was...

Astronomers have found strong evidence that a massive black hole is being ejected from its host galaxy at a speed of several million miles per hour. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory suggest that the black hole collided and merged with another black hole and received a powerful recoil kick from gravitational wave radiation. "It's hard to believe that a supermassive black hole weighing millions of times the mass of the sun could be moved at all, let alone kicked out of a galaxy at enormous speed," said Francesca Civano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), who led...

Astronomers have used NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. At a distance of 160 million light years, it is also the nearest known pair of supermassive black holes. The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago. "If this galaxy wasn't so close we'd have no chance of separating the two...

Superfluids are strange states of matter, typically forming at very low and very high temperatures, exhibiting gonzo properties like a seemingly gravity-defying tendency to climb up the walls of containers and friction-free superconductivity. That is, they are perfect conductors that don't lose energy during transmission. And the fact that they appear to exist at the center of neutron stars tells scientists a lot about nuclear interactions in high-density matter and the life-cycles of neutron stars. The pressure within neutron stars is so intense that in the stars' cores, charged particles merge, resulting in a star mostly consisting of neutrons (hence...

Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic "train wrecK" between giant galaxy clusters. NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. Astronomers have discovered a chaotic scene unlike any witnessed before in a cosmic “train wreck” between giant galaxy clusters. NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and optical telescopes revealed a dark matter core that was mostly devoid of galaxies, which may pose problems for current theories of dark matter behavior. "These results challenge our...

Strange Stars? Odd features hint at novel matter Peter Weiss Exotic forms of matter never observed before in the wild may have turned up in the remnants of two collapsed stars, according to new findings publicized last week by NASA. At an April 10 briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., researchers argued that observations by the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory indicate that the astronomical object dubbed RXJ1856.5-3754 may lack the neutrons, protons, and electrons of ordinary matter. Another object, 3C58, may contain odd forms of matter surrounded by neutrons. Since its discovery in 1996, astronomers had thought that RXJ1856...

WASHINGTON – The man convicted of killing Washington intern Chandra Levy nearly a decade ago was sentenced Friday to 60 years in prison. In November, a jury convicted Ingmar Guandique of first-degree murder in Levy's 2001 disappearance and death, despite a lack of witnesses and no DNA evidence linking him to the crime. Levy's mother, Susan Levy, asked Guandique directly if he had been responsible for her daughter's death. He shook his head. "Mr. Guandique, you are lower than a cockroach," Susan Levy told Guandique, before closing her statement with: "F... you." Guandique, wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, told the...

DEVELOPING: A jury has reached a verdict in the trial of a man accused of killing Washington intern Chandra Levy, MyFoxDC.com reports. Ingmar Guandique is charged with murder in Levy's death nearly a decade ago. Levy disappeared in 2001. Her case drew attention when she was romantically linked to then-Congressman Gary Condit. The California Democrat was initially a suspect but police no longer think he was involved. Prosecutors say Levy's death fits a pattern of attacks by Guandique in 2001 in Washington's Rock Creek Park. That's where her remains were found. Defense lawyers say the Salvadoran immigrant has become a...

For the first time, scientists believe they have witnessed the birth of a black hole. This Story Scientists witness the apparent birth of a black hole Animation: Supernova producing a black hole Interactive map of nearby black hole The evidence began arriving 30 years ago from a star 50 million light-years away that had imploded, setting into motion events that created a region where gravity is so great that nothing can escape, even light. The initial 1979 observation of the exploding star was made by an amateur astronomer from Western Maryland, but the profession's top scientists have studied it intently...