The United Nations working group will share information about dangerous asteroids and help decide on the best course of action if one threatens the planet
    

At a ceremony held yesterday at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean Atacama Desert the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera, handed over the recently signed legal documents by which the Chilean government will transfer the land around Cerro Armazones to ESO. Cerro Armazones, a 3060-metre peak 20 kilometres from the site of ESO’s Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal, will be the future home of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT).

A 3D map of stellar motion suggests that our galactic neighbourhood is undulating up and down, opening up a fresh cosmic mystery
    

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NASA's Great Observatories are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses" found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes can typically see. This ambitious collaborative program is called The Frontier Fields. Astronomers will spend the next three years peering at six massive clusters of galaxies. Researchers are interested not only as to what's inside the clusters, but also what's behind them. The gravitational fields of the clusters brighten and magnify distant background galaxies that are so faint they would otherwise be unobservable.

NASA's Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before.

Astronomers have discovered the seventh planet orbiting a distant star.

A team of international astronomers has discovered the most distant galaxy in the universe.

An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant galaxy yet.

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A team of astronomers has discovered a galaxy that sets the current distance record for galaxies whose distance has been definitively measured by spectroscopic redshift. The galaxy is seen as it was at a time just 700 million years after the Big Bang, when the universe was only about 5 percent of its current age of 13.8 billion years. This galaxy and dozens of others were selected for follow-up observations from the approximately 100,000 galaxies discovered in the Hubble Space Telescope CANDELS survey (Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey). The team used the Keck I Telescope in Hawaii to measure the redshift of the CANDELS galaxy, designated z8_GND_5296, at 7.51. This is the highest galaxy redshift ever confirmed. The spectral redshift of galaxies is caused by the expansion of space from the Big Bang.

Our universe could have bounced from the ashes of a dying cosmos, thanks to a push from a ghostly force, and without the help of inflation
    

Yesterday, the decision was taken to postpone the launch of ESA's Gaia mission after a technical issue was identified in another satellite already in orbit.

ESA's Planck space telescope has been turned off after nearly 4.5 years soaking up the relic radiation from the Big Bang and studying the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the Universe's history.

A galaxy rapidly forming stars 700 million years after the Big Bang at redshift 7.51

Nature 502, 7472 (2013). doi:10.1038/nature12657

Authors: S. L. Finkelstein, C. Papovich, M. Dickinson, M. Song, V. Tilvi, A. M. Koekemoer, K. D. Finkelstein, B. Mobasher, H. C. Ferguson, M. Giavalisco, N. Reddy, M. L. N. Ashby, A. Dekel, G. G. Fazio, A. Fontana, N. A. Grogin, J.-S. Huang, D. Kocevski, M. Rafelski, B. J. Weiner & S. P. Willner

Of several dozen galaxies observed spectroscopically that are candidates for having a redshift (z) in excess of seven, only five have had their redshifts confirmed via Lyman α emission, at z = 7.008, 7.045, 7.109, 7.213 and 7.215 (refs 1, 2, 3, 4). The small fraction of confirmed galaxies may indicate that the neutral fraction in the intergalactic medium rises quickly at z > 6.5, given that Lyman α is resonantly scattered by neutral gas. The small samples and limited depth of previous observations, however, makes these conclusions tentative. Here we report a deep near-infrared spectroscopic survey of 43 photometrically-selected galaxies with z > 6.5. We detect a near-infrared emission line from only a single galaxy, confirming that some process is making Lyman α difficult to detect. The detected emission line at a wavelength of 1.0343 micrometres is likely to be Lyman α emission, placing this galaxy at a redshift z = 7.51, an epoch 700 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy’s colours are consistent with significant metal content, implying that galaxies become enriched rapidly. We calculate a surprisingly high star-formation rate of about 330 solar masses per year, which is more than a factor of 100 greater than that seen in the Milky Way. Such a galaxy is unexpected in a survey of our size, suggesting that the early Universe may harbour a larger number of intense sites of star formation than expected.

Radio astronomy: Finger on the pulsar

Nature 502, 7472 (2013). doi:10.1038/502439a

Author: Bernie Fanaroff

Bernie Fanaroff probes a study on how radio telescopes have opened up our understanding of the Universe.

Astrophysics: Recipe for regularity

Nature 502, 7472 (2013). doi:10.1038/502453a

Authors: Ellen Zweibel

A detailed astrophysical model has been laid out that not only reproduces the far-infrared–radio correlation for galaxies that are actively forming stars, but also predicts how the correlation is modified at high redshift.

Astronomy: New distance record for galaxies

Nature 502, 7472 (2013). doi:10.1038/502459a

Authors: Dominik A. Riechers

Spectroscopic measurements of 43 candidates for distant galaxies have confirmed one to be the most remote galaxy securely identified to date — and it forms stars more than 100 times faster than the Milky Way. See Letter p.524

Due to recently-discovered technical issues, ESA has decided to perform additional verifications on its Gaia satellite, and therefore we have requested that Arianespace postpone the Gaia launch, currently scheduled for November 20, 2013. A new launch date will be announced as soon as the availability of the satellite is confirmed.

The number of observed exoplanets - those orbiting distant stars - passes 1,000 and of these, 12 might be habitable, scientists claim.

Final word is near on dark-matter signal

Nature 502, 7472 (2013). http://www.nature.com/doifinder/10.1038/502421a

Author: Eugenie Samuel Reich

An influential US experiment prepares to release its first results.

ESA's billion-star surveyor Gaia will be launched from Europe's spaceport in Kourou on 20 November to begin a five-year mission to map the stars with unprecedented precision.