Featured in MSNBC.com
"A galaxy far, farther away" November 20, 2008
A New Hubble Space Telescope Distance to NGC 1569: Starburst Properties and IC 342 Group Membership
Aaron J. Grocholski, Alessandra Aloisi, Roeland P. van der Marel, Jennifer Mack, Francesca Annibali, Luca Angeretti, Laura Greggio, Enrico V.
Held, Donatella Romano, Marco Sirianni, and Monica Tosi
The astronomers' observations were made in 1999 using Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, and in 2006 and 2007 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. Results were published in the Oct. 20 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters. In addition to Aloisi and Grocholski, the co-authors included Marco Sirianni of ESA and the Space Telescope Science Institute, or STScI; Jennifer Mack and Roeland van der Marel of STScI; Luca Angeretti, Donatella Romano and Monica Tosi of Italy's Astronomical Observatory of Bologna; and Francesca Annibali, Laura Greggio and Enrico Held of the Astronomical Observatory of Padua.
Featured in Scientific American
"Baby Boom Galaxy Churning Out Stars" July 17, 2008
Spectroscopic Confirmation of an Extreme Starburst at Redshift 4.547
Peter Capak, C. L. Carilli, N. Lee, T. Aldcroft, H. Aussel, E. Schinnerer, G. W. Wilson, M. S. Yun, A. Blain, M. Giavalisco, O. Ilbert, J. Kartaltepe, K.-S. Lee, H. McCracken, B. Mobasher, M. Salvato, S. Sasaki, K. S. Scott, K. Sheth, Y. Shioya, D. Thompson, M. Elvis, D. B. Sanders, N. Z. Scoville, Y. Tanaguchi
"Our Milky Way galaxy produces only about 10 new stars annually. But a galaxy far, far away is experiencing a major baby boom. It’s pumping out up to 4,000 new stars a year, and should become a massive elliptical galaxy. The discovery was announced in the July 10th issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters."
Featured in ScienceNOW
""Baby Boom" in a Stellar Nursery" July 11, 2008
Spectroscopic Confirmation of an Extreme Starburst at Redshift 4.547
Peter Capak, C. L. Carilli, N. Lee, T. Aldcroft, H. Aussel, E. Schinnerer, G. W. Wilson, M. S. Yun, A. Blain, M. Giavalisco, O. Ilbert, J. Kartaltepe, K.-S. Lee, H. McCracken, B. Mobasher, M. Salvato, S. Sasaki, K. S. Scott, K. Sheth, Y. Shioya, D. Thompson, M. Elvis, D. B. Sanders, N. Z. Scoville, Y. Tanaguchi
"The galaxy, which they've nicknamed "Baby Boom," was producing at least 4000 new stars per year, about 400 times more than the Milky Way is now. The data also indicate how this happened: As "Baby Boom" collected nearby star clusters, they slammed into each other with such force that they created a bonanza of new stars. So the galaxy's massive haul comes not just from the stars it collected but from all the new stars that resulted from the collection process, the team reported yesterday in Astrophysical Journal Letters."
Featured in Popular Science
"A Star Is Born. Well, a Lot of Stars" July 11, 2008
Spectroscopic Confirmation of an Extreme Starburst at Redshift 4.547
Peter Capak, C. L. Carilli, N. Lee, T. Aldcroft, H. Aussel, E. Schinnerer, G. W. Wilson, M. S. Yun, A. Blain, M. Giavalisco, O. Ilbert, J. Kartaltepe, K.-S. Lee, H. McCracken, B. Mobasher, M. Salvato, S. Sasaki, K. S. Scott, K. Sheth, Y. Shioya, D. Thompson, M. Elvis, D. B. Sanders, N. Z. Scoville, Y. Tanaguchi
"Considering the birth rate, astronomers might have named this the Rabbit Galaxy. According to a new paper in today’s issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers have discovered a galaxy that birthed stars 400 times faster than our Milky Way, overturning previously held ideas about the formation of giant galaxies"
Featured in MSNBC
"The sights and sounds of space" June 27, 2008
Discovery of the Dust-Enshrouded Progenitor of SN 2008S with Spitzer
José L. Prieto, Matthew D. Kistler, Todd A. Thompson, Hasan Yüksel, Christopher S. Kochanek, Krzysztof Z. Stanek, John F. Beacom, Paul Martini, Anna Pasquali, Jill Bechtold
"This week, the scientists behind NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope put out a new view of the Fireworks Galaxy, a dazzling spiral about 17 million light-years away in the
constellation Cepheus. The Fireworks Galaxy isn't being featured just because it's getting close to the Fourth of July:
Astronomers took a close look at the scene to figure out whether a supernova first spotted earlier this year was really a supernova
after all. Their conclusion, slated for publication in the July 1 issue
of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, was that the outburst may have been a new type of explosion for dusty, massive stars."
Featured in Fox News
"Astronomers: Earth-Like Planets May Be Very Common" February 18, 2008
Evolution of Mid-Infrared Excess around Sun-like Stars: Constraints on Models of Terrestrial Planet Formation
M. R. Meyer, J. M. Carpenter, E. E. Mamajek, L. A. Hillenbrand, D. Hollenbach, A. Moro-Martin, J. S. Kim, M. D. Silverstone, J. Najita, D. C. Hines, I. Pascucci, J. R. Stauffer, J. Bouwman, and D. E. Backman
The best guess scientists have for the time scale of the formation of Earth, as a result of collisions, is when our sun was between 10 million to 50 million years old (it is now about 4.6 billion years old). Meyer found the warm dust trails in stars between 3 million and 300 million years old. The results are detailed in the Feb. 1, 2008, issue of Astrophysical Journal Letters.
