Niels Bohr Institute > News > News 2011 > Astronomy
News 2011: Astronomy
Discovery of the first planet the size of Earth
21. december 2011
Astronomers from the NBI have participated in the first discovery of a planet the size of Earth. Using the Kepler satellite, astronomers have observed a solar system with five planets of which one is the size of the Earth
Mysterious Christmas star explosion
01. december 2011
Christmas Day 2010 the Swift satellite observed a very strange gamma-ray burst in the distant universe. Gamma-ray bursts are extremely powerful bursts of radiation predominantly associated with massive stars that die in a
Ancient stars shed light on the prehistory of the Milky Way
15. november 2011
Some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way – a kind of stellar fossils contain abnormally large amounts of heavy elements like gold, platinum and uranium. Researchers at the NBI have with recent observations concluded how
Giant star explosion casts light on distant galaxies
02. november 2011
Astronomers including members from the NBI have used light from a distant gamma-ray burst to investigate the composition of matter in distant galaxies. Surprisingly, it turns out that some galaxies in the early universe
'Dark energy' and 'dark matter' the focus of the Euclid space mission
05. oktober 2011
The future European space mission, Euclid, which the European Space Agency has just selected for launch in 2019, will have prominent Danish participation. Space Science Center at the University of Copenhagen and DTU...
66 new telescopes to explore first solar systems and the primordial universe
30. september 2011
How do clouds of dust and gas surrounding newly formed stars become planets? – and how far back can you trace the building blocks of life? Danish astronomers will be researching this using the big new astronomical telescopes...
Light from galaxy clusters confirm theory of relativity
28. september 2011
Astrophysicists at the Dark Cosmology Centre at the NBI have managed to measure how the light is affected by gravity on its way out of galaxy clusters. The observations confirm the theoretical predictions...
Astronomers discover new way to measure Universe
27. september 2011
Astronomers at Dark Cosmology Centre at Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute have found a new way to measure distances. Because their new method uses quasars, some of the brightest objects known.
Satellite crashing down on Friday – Denmark barely in the danger zone
21. september 2011
NASA’s defunct Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) will crash down to Earth on Friday, September 23. Precisely where and when is not known for certain and NASA will only be able to give a more definite...
ESS Science Symposia launched at the Niels Bohr International Academy in Copenhagen
18. juli 2011
The first ESS Science Symposium at Niels Bohr International Academy (NBIA) was held in Copenhagen in late June, an NBIA conference on ESS research that initiates a series of annual workshops...
First galaxies created earlier than previously thought
14. april 2011
A team of astronomers, including members from the Niels Bohr Institute, have discovered a distant galaxy whose stars were created earlier in the history of the universe than previously observed.
Rare observation of cosmic explosion
08. marts 2011
Gamma ray bursts, which are the most powerful bursts of radiation in the universe, have now been observed in direct connection with an exploding giant star - a supernova. Researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute...
The universe is teeming with planets
03. februar 2011
More than a thousand potential planets have been found in the universe using NASA’s Kepler Satellite since the mission began in March 2009. One of these stars has a planetary system with no fewer than 6 planets.
Astronomers discover Earth-sized exoplanet
10. januar 2011
A solid planet approximately 1½ times the size of the Earth has been observed outside our solar system. It is the smallest planet found so far in the hunt for planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way and researchers from...
