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This multiwavelength mosaic, which combines more than 750 ALMA radio images and 9 Hubble infrared images, shows the star protocluster G286.21+0.17. ALMA reveals molecular clouds (purple) and Hubble reveals stars and glowing dust (yellow and red). Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Y. Cheng et al / AUI / NSF / S. Dagnello / NASA / ESA / Hubble.

ALMA and Hubble Capture Celestial Fireworks in Massive Stellar Protocluster

Jul 2, 2020 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have observed G286.21+0.17, a massive...

An artist’s impression of NGTS-4b and its star. Image credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick.

Remnant Core of Giant Planet Found Orbiting Sun-Like Star TOI-849

Jul 2, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

The newly-discovered planetary core, named TOI-849b, is a gas giant that was either stripped of its gaseous atmosphere or that failed to form one in its...

This illustration shows how the ultrahot Jupiter KELT-9b sees its host star. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Chris Smith, USRA.

Ultrahot Jupiter KELT-9b Has Two Summers and Two Winters Every 36 Hours

Jul 1, 2020 by News Staff

New observations from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have enabled astronomers to improve their understanding of the bizarre environment...

Giant Starspots May Explain Bizarre Dimming of Betelgeuse

Jun 30, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters points to the changes in the photosphere of the red supergiant star Betelgeuse as the source...

This illustration shows what the luminous blue variable star in PHL 293B could have looked like before its mysterious disappearance. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Massive Variable Star Mysteriously Disappears from Distant Dwarf Galaxy

Jun 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using the X-SHOOTER and the ESPRESSO (Echelle Spectrograph for Rocky Exoplanet- and Stable Spectroscopic Observation) instruments on ESO’s Very Large...

An artist’s impression of the quasar Pōniuā`ena. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld.

Astronomers Find Monster Quasar in Early Universe

Jun 29, 2020 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has discovered the second most distant quasar ever found. Named Pōniuā`ena and designated J100758.264+211529.207...

This Hubble image shows a flocculent spiral galaxy called NGC 2775. The image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible, ultraviolet and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). It is based on data obtained through five filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Spots Flocculent Spiral Galaxy

Jun 29, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a spectacular image of the spiral galaxy NGC 2775. This Hubble image shows a flocculent...

Compact System of Super-Earths Found around Lacaille 9352

Jun 26, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

A team of astronomers from the RedDots project has discovered two super-Earths and a candidate planet orbiting the nearby 4.57-billion-year-old red dwarf...

This Hubble image shows the Serpens Nebula, a stellar nursery about 1,300 light-years away. Within the nebula, in the upper right of the image, a shadow is created by the protoplanetary disk surrounding HBC 672. While the disk of debris is too tiny to be seen even by Hubble, its shadow is projected upon the cloud in which it was born. In this view, the feature, the Bat Shadow, spans approximately 200 times the diameter of our own Solar System. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI.

Hubble Observes ‘Flapping’ Shadow of HBC 672’s Planet-Forming Disk

Jun 26, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured striking images of HBC 672’s unseen protoplanetary disk casting a huge shadow across...

An artist’s impression of a four-planet system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Breakthrough Listen Scans Kepler-160 System for Alien Technosignatures

Jun 25, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

The Breakthrough Listen Initiative, the largest ever scientific research program aimed at finding evidence of alien civilizations, has conducted a search...

An artist’s rendition of a mystery compact object in ‘mass gap’ found by LIGO and Virgo gravitational wave detectors. Image credit: LIGO / Caltech / MIT / R. Hurt, IPAC.

GW190814 Sheds Light on Mass Gap between Neutron Stars and Black Holes

Jun 25, 2020 by News Staff

The gravitational-wave signal GW190814, detected on August 14, 2019 by NSF’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo...

Astronomers Find Neptune-Sized Exoplanet within Debris Disk around Nearby Star AU Microscopii

Jun 25, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a planet about the size of Neptune...

An artist’s impression of the TOI-1266 planetary system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Two Venus-Zone Planets Found Orbiting Nearby Red Dwarf

Jun 24, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have discovered and validated two small exoplanets orbiting the nearby red dwarf star TOI-1266. An artist’s impression of the TOI-1266 planetary...

An artist’s impression of a hot-Jupiter exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find Youngest Known Hot Jupiter

Jun 23, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered a transiting hot-Jupiter...

This Hubble image shows the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. de Jong / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Snaps Image of NGC 5907

Jun 22, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA has released a stunning image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the edge-on spiral galaxy NGC 5907. This Hubble image shows the edge-on...

This image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope shows the energetic Universe. As eROSITA scans the sky, the energy of the collected photons is measured with an accuracy ranging from 2% - 6%. To generate this image, in which the whole sky is projected onto an ellipse (so-called Aitoff projection) with the center of the Milky Way in the middle and the body of our Galaxy running horizontally, photons have been color-coded according to their energy (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1 keV, blue for 1-2.3 keV). The red diffuse glow away from the galactic plane is the emission of the hot gas in the vicinity of the Solar System (the Local Bubble). Along the plane itself, dust and gas absorb the lowest energy X-ray photons, so that only high-energy emitting sources can be seen, and their color appears blue in the image. The hotter gas close to the Galactic center, shown in green and yellow, carries imprinted the history of the most energetic processes in the life of the Milky Way, such as supernova explosions, driving fountains of gas out of the plane, and, possibly, past outburst from the now dormant supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Piercing through this turbulent, hot diffuse medium, are hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, which appear mostly white in the image, and uniformly distributed over the sky. Among them, distant active galactic nuclei are visible as point sources, while clusters of galaxies reveal themselves as extended X-ray nebulosities. In total, about one million X-ray sources have been detected in this image. Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team / Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics / Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov, IKI.

eROSITA X-Ray Telescope Captures Hot, Energetic Universe

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A new all-sky image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spectrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) space observatory contains over one million objects, about...

An artist’s impression of a water-world exoplanet. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Ocean Worlds May Be Common in Our Milky Way Galaxy

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

A team of U.S. astronomers has calculated internal heating rates for 53 terrestrial exoplanets and found that all of them are likely to have volcanic activity...

Hubble Observes Two Young, Rapidly Evolving Planetary Nebulae: NGC 6302 and NGC 7027

Jun 19, 2020 by News Staff

Planetary nebulae, whose stars shed their layers over thousands of years, can turn into crazy whirligigs while puffing off shells and jets of hot gas....

An artist’s impression of a magnetar. Image credit: ESA.

Astronomers Discover Youngest Magnetar Ever

Jun 18, 2020 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR), and ground-based...