astro news

* Nearby Star Erupts Dramatically
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061106_star_flare.html

A flare-up on a relatively nearby star is perhaps the most powerful such event ever detected, astronomers said today.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/061120_mm_blackhole_spin.html

X-ray vision has brought astronomers closer than ever to completely characterizing a black hole, a place where strange things happen.
Astronomers measured the spinning speed of three black holes, finding that one rotates at a breakneck 950 times per second, nearing its theoretical rotation limit of 1,150 spins a second. The black hole lies within the constellation Aquila (the Eagle) about 35,000 light-years from Earth.



Brilliant flare seen in II Pegasi
Scientists using NASA's Swift satellite have spotted a stellar flare on a nearby star so powerful that, had it been from our sun, it would have triggered a mass extinction on Earth. The flare was perhaps the most energetic magnetic stellar explosion ever detected ...
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4656

A Hubble and Spitzer masterpiece
A new image from NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes looks more like an abstract painting than a cosmic snapshot. The masterpiece shows the Orion Nebula in an explosion of infrared, ultraviolet and visible-light colors. It was "painted" by hundreds of baby stars on a canvas of gas and dust, with intense ultraviolet light and strong stellar winds as brushes ...
http://www.astronomy.com/asy/default.aspx?c=a&id=4655