Telescopes News

James Webb Space Telescope Marks Another Year of Significant Progress

The James Webb Space Telescope marked another year of significant progress in 2012 as flight instrumentation was completed and delivered to NASA.

Hi-C Imager Captures High-Resolution Images of Million-Degree Solar Corona

Work done in part by The University of Alabama has enabled a group of solar scientists to see into the sun’s corona in unprecedented detail.

NASA to Contribute Infrared Detectors for Euclid Space Telescope

NASA has joined the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Euclid mission, a space telescope designed to investigate the cosmological mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

APEX Telescope Helps Astronomers Study Birth of New Stars

In space, dense clouds of cosmic gas and dust are the birthplaces of new stars. In visible light, this dust is dark and obscuring, hiding the stars behind it. So much so that, when astronomer William Herschel observed one such cloud in the constellation of Scorpius in 1774, he thought it was a region empty of stars and is said to have exclaimed, "Truly there is a hole in the sky here!"

NASA Suborbital Telescope Gives Clear Evidence of Solar Braiding

A NASA suborbital telescope has given scientists the first clear evidence of energy transfer from the sun's magnetic field to the solar atmosphere or corona. This process, known as solar braiding, has been theorized by researchers, but remained unobserved until now.

New Images of Sun's Corona Will Help Predict Violent Solar Eruptions

A NASA sounding rocket flight in 2012 captured five minutes of the highest-resolution images ever taken of the Sun's million-degree outer atmosphere, the corona. The new images have provided tantalizing hints of another mechanism that likely contributes to the heating of the solar corona.

Royal Astronomical Society Honors Durham University Academics

Two rising young stars in the world of astronomy research have been awarded prestigious prizes by the Royal Astronomical Society.

Ultraviolet Telescope Combined with Imaging Spectrograph to Study Sun's Atmosphere

NASA's next Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway.