Numerous astronomical results have been obtained thanks to AMBER, the instrument which equips the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). AMBER (Astronomical Multi-BEam Recombiner) makes it possible to combine the beams of three of the four 8-metre VLT telescopes.

Scientists aimed the South Pole Telescope at Jupiter on the evening of Feb. 16 and successfully collected the instrument's first test observations. Soon, far more distant quarry will fall under the SPT's sights as a team from nine institutions tackles one of the biggest mysteries of modern cosmological research. That mystery: What is dark energy, the force that dominates the universe?

The AMBER instrument installed at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) combines the light from three 8.2 meter telescopes, making the VLT the world's largest optical telescope, with a total mirror surface larger than 150 m2 and a maximum telescope separation greater than 130 m. Two years after installation, the first astrophysical results are blossoming. They are being published this week as a special feature in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Supernovae stand out in the sky like cosmic lighthouses. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and at the National Astronomical Institute of Italy have now found a way to use these cosmic beacons to measure distances in space more accurately. The researchers have been able to show that all supernovae of a certain type explode with the same mass and the same energy - the brightness depends only on how much nickel the supernova contains.

A British astronomer is to lead a Pan-European project to develop a new 'roadmap to the stars'.

Eight projects led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have been awarded more than 27 million hours of computing time at the lab's Center for Computational Sciences.

New cosmological computer simulations produced by a team of astronomers from Northwestern University, Harvard University and the University of Michigan show for the first time that supermassive black holes (SMBHs), which exist at the centers of nearly all galaxies, often come together during triple galaxy interactions.

Astronomers have found an enormous halo of stars bound to the Andromeda galaxy and extending far beyond the swirling disk seen in images of the famous galaxy, our nearest large galactic neighbor. The discovery, reported at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, suggests that Andromeda is as much as five times larger than astronomers had previously thought.

The stars and gas which are seen in galaxies account for only a few percent of the gravitating material in the Universe.