Mysterious stash of coins found hidden in cave

A cave in Britain may have been the perfect hiding place for a stash of coins … because 2,000 years passed before anyone found them. A climber sheltering from the rain happened upon four coins in Dovedale, Derbyshire, reports the Ashbourne News Telegraph, which led to a National Trust excavation of the site, called Reynard’s Cave.

And what exactly did they find? A trove of 26 Roman and Late Iron Age coins and 20 Late Iron Age gold and silver pieces that may have belonged to the Corieltavi Tribe; three of the Roman coins pre-date the 43 AD invasion of Britain, reports the BBC.

The discovery is a triple mystery: Roman coins have never been found in a cave, coins from these two civilizations have never been buried together, and the Corieltavi have long been thought to have occupied areas further east during the Late Iron Age.

The stash was possibly hidden in a cave for protection; Late Iron Age coins were largely symbols of power and status, rather than used to buy goods.

However, it's possible the coins' owner squirreled away his "best stuff," or was awaiting an increase in their value, speculates one archeologist on the dig. The project proved exciting for one participant—a military vet involved in the excavation as part of a rehabilitation program.

"I was working at the back of the cave, in the dark, and I was the first person to find a coin—a silver coin. It was so exciting,” she tells the Telegraph. The coins have been cleaned and will become permanent museum display. (In other ancient news, Rome’s Coliseum was once a condo of sorts.)

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Astronomy Teacher Finds Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasure

A Connecticut astronomy teacher has uncovered a dazzling view of a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way while exploring the "hidden treasures" of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The new Hubble photo, released Thursday (Jan. 17), shows an intriguing star nursery dotted with dark dust lanes in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 200,000 light-years from Earth. The Hubble observation used to create the image was discovered in the telescope's archives by Josh Lake, a high school astronomy teacher at Pomfret School in Pomfret, Conn., as part of the "Hubble Hidden Treasures" contest that challenged space fans to find unseen images from the observatory.

Hubble officials also released an eye-popping video tour of the Large Magellanic Cloud, which zooms in on the region highlighted in Lake's photo.

Lake won first prize in the Hubble photo contest with an image of the LHA 120-N11 (N11) region of the Large Magellanic Cloud. Hubble officials combined Lake's image with more observations of the N11 region in blue, green and near-infrared light wavelengths to create the new view.

"In the center of this image, a dark finger of dust blots out much of the light," Hubble officials said in an image description. "While nebulae are mostly made of hydrogen, the simplest and most plentiful element in the universe, dust clouds are home to heavier and more complex elements, which go on to form rocky planets like the Earth." [Hubble Telescope's Hidden Treasures: Winning Photos

The interstellar dust in N11 is extremely fine, much more so than household dust on Earth. It is more similar to smoke, researchers explained.

The Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, is one of two small satellite galaxies of the Milky Way (the other is the smaller, aptly named Small Magellanic Cloud). Because of its relatively close proximity, the Large Magellanic Cloud has long been used as a sort of cosmic laboratory to study how stars form in other galaxies.

"It lies in a fortuitous location in the sky, far enough from the plane of the Milky Way that it is neither outshone by too many nearby stars, nor obscured by the dust in the Milky Way’s center," Hubble officials said in a statement. "It is also close enough to study in detail … and lies almost face-on, giving us a bird’s eye view."

In addition to the N11 region, the Large Magellanic Cloud is also home to the spectacular Tarantula nebula, the brightest nearby star nursery, Hubble officials said.

The Hubble Space Telescope has been snapping spectacular photos of the universe since 1994 and is a joint project by NASA and the European Space Agency. This month, NASA officials said the long-lived space observatory could potentially last through 2018.

You can follow SPACE.com Managing Editor Tariq Malik on Twitter @tariqjmalik. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Copyright 2013 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Warped Galaxies Reveal Signs of Universe's Hidden Dark Matter (SPACE.com)

Warped visions of distant galaxy clusters are offering a reflection of the invisible matter inside them that astronomers are using to map the unseen side of the universe.

Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have observed the first of a number of galaxy clusters that they hope to use to build a cosmic census of hidden dark matter. Dark matter, thought to make up 98 percent of all matter in the universe, cannot be seen, only felt through its gravitational pull.

To find out where dark matter lies, and how much of it there is, scientists look for an effect called gravitational lensing. This bending of light is caused when mass — including dark matter — warps space-time, causing light to travel a crooked path through it. The end effect is a curvy, funhouse-mirror type view of distant cosmic objects.

The observed lensing is always stronger than it should be based on the visible matter alone. By compensating for this effect, researchers can deduce what component is caused by the presence of dark matter. [Spectacular Hubble Photos]

Scientists are planning to observe a total of 25 galaxy clusters under a project called CLASH (Cluster Lensing and Supernova survey with Hubble).

One of the first objects observed for the new census is the galaxy cluster MACS J1206.2-0847. This conglomeration of galaxies is one of the most massive structures in the universe, and its gigantic gravitational pull causes stunning gravitational lensing.

In addition to curving of light, gravitational lensing often produces double images of the same galaxy. In the new observation of cluster MACS J1206.2-0847, astronomers counted 47 multiple images of 12 newly identified galaxies.

By conducting the survey, astronomers are attempting not just to weigh these distant behemoths, but to learn more about when and how they formed. Theory suggests that the first galaxy clusters came together between 9 billion and 12 billion years ago.

Some previous research suggests that dark matter is packed more densely inside galaxy clusters than previously thought. If the new study can confirm that, it may mean that the universe's galaxy clusters formed earlier than most scientists assume.

You can follow SPACE.com senior writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

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