Vatican Chief Astronomer Refutes I.D.

The Vatican's chief astronomer, Rev. George Coyne, has expressed that Intelligent Design is not science, and does not belong in the science classroom. "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be," Coyne said. "If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science."

Double Supernova Remnant

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory captured this image of two supernova remnants (SNRs) known as DEM L316, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The SNR in the upper left has been found to contain significantly greater amounts of iron, suggesting it is a Type Ia supernova (triggered by the infall of matter onto a white dwarf), whereas the lower right remnant is a Type II (exploded massive star). Although the two SNRs appear to be colliding with each other in this image, this is probably an illusion.

Mountains of Creation

The Spitzer Space Telescope recently released this image of the eastern part of a region named W5 in the constellation Cassiopeia. The image reveals pillar-like structures similar to those imaged by the HST in the Eagle Nebula in 1995, a result of cool star-forming gas and dust regions sculpted by radiation and wind emanating from nearby massive stars.

Venus Express

Watch tonight's launch of ESA's Venus Express aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, which is headed on a 162-day journey toward Venus. Here is an article describing the mission. (Image from APOD.)

Science, Religion, and the Unseen

A nice op-ed by Lawrence Krauss in the New York Times, discussing the similarities and differences between the scientific and the religious fascinations with the unseen.

Robert's Quartet

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) recently released the above image of Robert's Quartet, a group of 4 galaxies located about 160 million light years from Earth and a beautiful example of a compact group of galaxies. The image was taken with the FORS2 instrument on the Very Large Telescope (VLT) .

Universe's First Stars Observed

The Spitzer Space Telescope is believed to have observed light from the earliest stars to have formed in the Universe, around 200 million years after the Big Bang. These first stars, usually referred to as Population III stars (from Walter Baade's original classification scheme) were around 100 times more massive than our Sun, and emitted the ultraviolet photons responsible for the reionization of the Universe. As a result of the expansion of the Universe, these photons are now visible in the infrared range, thereby making them observable by Spitzer. As Dr. John Mather, the senior project manager for the JWST, explains, "This deep observation was filled with familiar-looking stars and galaxies. We removed everything we knew - all the stars and galaxies both near and far. We were left with a picture of part of the sky with no stars or galaxies, but it still had this infrared glow with giant blobs that we think could be the glow from the very first stars."

Copernicus' Remains Reported Found

Polish archaeologists have reported the discovery of what they believe are the remains of Nicolaus Copernicus under an altar in a cathedral on Poland's Baltic coast. Although only DNA testing will confirm the claim, the age of the skull and bones, as well as the facial features, suggest they once belonged to Copernicus.