Colossal tail trails dying star

[Mike]

A distant star that hurtles through space at extraordinary speeds has a huge, comet-like tail trailing in its wake, astronomers say.
The appendage, which measures a colossal 13 light years in length, was spotted by Nasa's Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) space telescope.

The researchers said that nothing like it had ever been spotted around a star.

They believe the star, known as Mira, will help them to study what happens as stars meet their demise.

Mark Seibert, a co-author of the paper, which was published in the journal Nature, and a scientist at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, said: "This is an utterly new phenomenon to us, and we are still in the process of understanding the physics involved."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6947607.stm

[Rick]

A space-based observatory has captured images of a 13 light-year long tail stretching out behind a well known red-giant star, Mira.

The pictures have come as a complete shock to astronomers: Mira has been gazed upon from Earth for almost half a millennium, but nothing like this tail has ever been seen before.

More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/16/streaker_star/

[Rick]

NASA Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft

NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time.

"GALEX is a remarkable accomplishment," said Jeff Hayes, NASA's GALEX program executive in Washington. "This small Explorer mission has mapped and studied galaxies in the ultraviolet, light we cannot see with our own eyes, across most of the sky."

A slideshow showing some of the popular GALEX images is online at: http://go.nasa.gov/17xAVDd

Graphics and additional information about the Galaxy Evolution Explorer are online at: http://www.nasa.gov/galex

More: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex20130628.html