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• August 2007
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August 2007:

A TEAM OF ASTRONOMERS IDENTIFIES THE MOST MASSIVE STAR EVER
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/CASCA2007_Moffat.html

Although stars with masses reaching up to 150 times the mass of the Sun are expected in the local Universe, no one has reliably found a star exceeding 83 solar masses so far. Until now that is. A team of astronomers from Université de Montréal has identified the most massive star ever weighed. The details are being presented today by Professor Anthony Moffat at the annual meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA) held at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston (ON).

This team has “weighed” a star in a binary system with a mass of 114 times the mass of the Sun, thus breaking the 100 barrier for the first time. Even its companion is no slouch, with 84 solar masses. The 3.7724-day orbiting binary star carries the rather unromantic name of A1, the brightest hot star right at the heart of a giant but dense, young star cluster called NGC 3603, located in the southern Milky Way at a distance of some 20 000 light-years.

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ASTRONOMERS FIND MOST DISTANT BLACK HOLE
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/CASCA2007_Willott.html

A team of astronomers from Canada, France and the United States is announcing the discovery of a record-breaking black hole located nearly 13 billion light years from the Earth. Details of the discovery, made with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, are being presented today by Dr Chris Willott, of the University of Ottawa, to astronomers and astrophysicists during the annual conference of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA 2007) in Kingston, Ontario. Future observations of this black hole will shed light on the early evolution of the Universe.

The black hole was discovered because when a black hole sucks gas towards it, the gas heats up and glows very brightly, allowing it to be seen at vast distances from the Earth. This type of black hole is known as a quasar.

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BORING STAR MAY MEAN LIVELIER PLANET
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/CASCA2007_Matthews.html

The bad news for astronomers is: The light from the planetary system Gliese 581 is boring.

The good news for any Gliesians that might live there: The light from the star Gliese 581a is boring.

Canada's space telescope, MOST, placed Gleise 581 (pronounced"Gleez-eh" 581) under a scientific stakeout for about a month and a half, after a planet that might be capable of supporting life was discovered in that system. MOST, a Canadian Space Agency mission,sensitively measured the light output from the star with two goals. First, to look for "transits"- dips in the light from the star if the planet's orbit carried it directly between Earth and the star - to measure the size of the planet. Second, to monitor the variability of the dim red dwarf star itself and check its suitability as a home star for life around it.

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April 2007:

NRC SCIENTISTS PRODUCE WORLD'S MOST SENSITIVE RADIO DETECTORS TO PROBE THE UNIVERSE
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/24042007.html

The National Research Council of Canada has designed and built the most sensitive and precise radio detector ever built for millimetre-wavelength operation. Called "Band 3" millimetre-wavelength radio receivers, these devices promise to revolutionize studies of the cold Universe, notably about the birth of stars and planets.

Created at the National Research Council Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics (NRC-HIA), the Band 3 receiver systems will be installed on the world's largest and most sophisticated radio telescope the Atacama Large Millimetre Array, known as ALMA being built in the Chilean Andes.* A receiver will be installed on each ALMA antenna for research purposes but will also ensure that atmospheric disturbances are corrected across the entire ALMA array. ALMA is the highest priority for a new ground-based astronomical facility in the Long Range Plan for Canadian Astrophysics. The first scientific results should be available in about three years. Researchers expect spectacular images of young stars and galaxies to be made using the Band 3 receivers.

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FEATHERWEIGHT CELESTIAL PAIR HAS UNCERTAIN FUTURE TOGETHER
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/10042007.html

Astronomers have serendipitously discovered a record-breaking pair of low-mass stars with an extreme orbital separation. The petite objects, each of which has a mass less than 100 times that of Jupiter, are separated by more than 5,000 times the distance between the Sun and Earth ­ a value that breaks the previous record by a factor of three and leaves the duration of their future together uncertain.

The celestial duo is tethered by a weak gravitational link that results in an orbital dance so slow that it takes about 500,000 years to complete a single revolution. Scaled down, this system would be like two baseballs orbiting each other about 300 kilometers (200 miles) apart.

The characterization of the system was made using near-infrared spectroscopic data taken with the Gemini South telescope, in conjunction with earlier discovery and confirmation observations made at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory 1.5-meter telescope operated by the Small and Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System (SMARTS) and archival data from the 2-Micron All-Sky Survey (2MASS) and the Digital Sky Survey (DSS). The result was published in the April 10, 2007, issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters by lead author Étienne Artigau, a Science Fellow at Gemini Observatory, and a team that includes astronomers from the Université de Montréal, and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

For the complete article, click on the link above

March 2007:

WORLD-LEADING COSMOLOGIST AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO WINS CANADA'S MOST PRESTIGIOUS SCIENCE PRIZE
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/28032007.html

A University of Toronto cosmologist who listens to “cosmic music” is the latest winner of the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, Canada’s most prestigious science prize.

Richard Bond will be honoured by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) next Monday, March 19 in Ottawa. Named for Canadian Nobel laureate Gerhard Herzberg, the annual prize guarantees the winner $1 million in research funding over the next five years. As Director of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) from 1996 to 2006, Bond promoted that organization's mandate for a pan-Canadian approach to world-class science, attracting postdoctoral students from across Canada and the world. He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2005, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London and of Canada. With more than 12,000 citations, Bond is Canada's most highly cited astronomer.

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September 2006:

“CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA” CHALLENGES UNDERSTANDING OF HOW SUPERNOVAE WORK
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/20092006.html

An international team of astronomers led by a group at the University of Toronto has discovered a supernova more massive than previously believed possible. This has experts rethinking our basic understanding of how stars explode as supernovae, according to a paper to be published in Nature on September 21.

University of Toronto postdoctoral researcher Andy Howell, lead author of the study, identified a Type Ia supernova named SNLS-03D3bb in a distant galaxy 4 billion light years away that originated from a dense evolved star, termed a 'white dwarf,' whose mass is far larger than any previous example. Type Ia supernovae are thermonuclear explosions that destroy carbon-oxygen white dwarf stars that have accreted matter from a companion star.

For the complete article, click on the link above

August 2006:

Space rock confirmed as Canada's 69th meteorite
http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2006/08/01/space-rock.html

Nearly 40 years have passed since Renee Johnson found what she thought was a meteorite, and now a University of Calgary program has confirmed her extraterrestrial find. Johnson found her space rock in 1968, near Prince Rupert, B.C., while hunting for Christmas trees.

"I always thought that it was a meteorite so I always kept it and I always wanted to find out for sure if it was, but I never knew how to go about doing that," she said. Last month, she showed her rock to Adrian Karolko, a fourth-year geology student from the University of Calgary. He was in Kelowna as part of the university's Prairie Meteorite Search program, which hunts for such finds in Western Canada.

For the complete article, click on the link above

BABY `Planemos’ CAN BE BORN AS TWINS
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/03082006.html

A team led by a U of T astronomy professor is challenging an existing theoretical model and thrilling the astronomy community with its discovery of a seven-Jupiter-mass companion next to a planemo, or planetary mass object, only twice its mass. Both objects have masses similar to those of extra-solar giant planets, usually found in orbit around a star. Unexpectedly, these bodies appear to circle each other.

“This is a truly remarkable pair of twins – each weighing some hundred times less than our sun,” says Ray Jayawardhana, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto. “Their mere existence is a surprise, and their origin and fate a bit of a mystery.”

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SPACE IS DUSTY, AND ASTRONOMERS FINALLY KNOW WHY
http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/~casca/PR/08062006.html

Massive star supernovae have been major "dust factories" ever since the first generations of stars formed several hundred million years after the Big Bang, according to an international study published in Science Express today.

The scientific team trained their telescopes on Supernova 2003gd, which exploded in the NGC 628 spiral galaxy 30 million light-years from Earth. The light from the 2003gd first reached Earth on March 17, 2003. At its brightest, it could be seen in an amateur astronomer's telescope. While many supernovae are discovered each year, this particular one stood out because it was relatively nearby and could be followed for a long-than-usual time by the specialized infrared detectors of the Spitzer Space Telescope, and by an optical spectrograph on the Gemini North telescope.

"2003gd is, quite literally, the smoking gun," says Doug Welch, professor, physics & astronomy at McMaster University, and one of 17 astronomers involved in the study. "These carbon and silicon dust particles which form from the supernovae blast make possible the many generations of high-mass stars and all the heavy elements they produce. These are elements which make up the bulk of everything around us on Earth, including you and me."

For the complete article, click on the link above

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