News and Events
An international team of researchers led by Médéric Boquien of the University of Massachusetts Amherst has shown that debris formed when two galaxies collide makes a simpler, more accessible laboratory for studying the process of star formation. (www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080603183121.htm.)
They were calendars before there were calendars. To the uninitiated, sunwheels are probably a complete mystery, but to ancient farmers these assemblages of stones (think Stonehenge) were needed to know when to plant or harvest crops. (www.masslive.com/hampfrank/republican.)
We all start to party less around middle age, and new studies by a team led by University of Texas at Austin astronomer Shardha Jogee [including UMass astronomer Dan McIntosh] now finds that the universe, as a whole, is no exception. (www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0801/25gems)
A composite radio-optical image shows five new clouds of hydrogen gas discovered using the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). The spiral galaxy M81 and its satellite, M82, are seen in visible light (white); intergalactic hydrogen gas revealed by the GBT is shown in red; and additional hydrogen gas earlier detected by the Very Large Array is shown in green. (www.nrao.edu/pr/2008/m81clouds)
