ScienceDaily: Space & Time News

Lifting the veil on a dark galaxy Posted: 06 Feb 2015 09:53 AM PST A cluster of young, pulsating stars discovered in the far side of the Milky Way may mark the location of a previously unseen dark-matter dominated dwarf galaxy hidden behind clouds of dust. A team used data collected by the ESO's VISTA to find four young stars approximately 300,000 light years away. These young stars are Cepheid variables, the most distant found close to the plane of the Milky Way.

Physicists working to understand how and why matter came about Posted: 06 Feb 2015 09:51 AM PST Physicists are engaged in a series of neutrino experiments, called NOvA, now under way at Fermilab to help answer how and why matter came about.

Astronomers breathe new life into venerable instrument Posted: 06 Feb 2015 08:16 AM PST Astronomers has revived the HPOL Spectropolarimeter, an instrument that measures polarized light from distant astronomical objects. HPOL began operating at the University of Wisconsin's Pine Bluff Observatory in 1989, but was retired in 2004 following equipment failures. The consortium relocated the instrument to the University of Toledo and upgraded several of its components. The new HPOL now operates at Ritter Observatory in Toledo, where it is obtaining higher-quality data than its predecessor.