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An artist’s impression of a thin gas cloud formed by tidal disruption from a passing star. Wang et al. think this is one of the possible ways the cold clump of gas detected in the study could have been formed. Image credit: Mark Myers / OzGrav.

Radio Astronomers Detect ‘Invisible’ Filament of Cold Gas

Feb 5, 2021 by News Staff

Using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and background radio galaxies, astronomers have spotted a long cloud of cold hydrogen...

An artist’s impression of a hot-Jupiter exoplanet. Image credit: ESA / ATG Medialab / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Chromium Hydride Detected in Atmosphere of WASP-31b

Feb 4, 2021 by Natali Anderson

A team of astronomers from the University of Groningen, the University of Edinburgh, and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research has detected chromium...

An artist’s impression of PSR J2039-5617 and its companion. Image credit: B. Knispel / C.J. Clark / Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics / NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Astronomers Discover Rare ‘Redback’ Millisecond Pulsar

Feb 4, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Fermi Space Telescope and the enormous computing power of the citizen science project Einstein@Home, astronomers have found that...

An artist’s impression of the KIC 8462852 binary system. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Milky Way’s ‘Most Mysterious Star’ Has a Companion

Feb 2, 2021 by Sergio Prostak

KIC 8462852, a mysteriously dimming star located about 1,480 light-years away in the constellation of Cygnus, is, in fact, a binary stellar system, made...

Lab experiment using water tank simulation to demonstrate backreaction in an analogue black hole. Image credit: University of Nottingham.

Physicists Observe Backreaction in Analogue Black Hole Experiment

Feb 2, 2021 by News Staff

Physicists from the University of Nottingham and the University of Cambridge have for the first time demonstrated that the evolution of black holes resulting...

This image from the SkyMapper Telescope shows the vicinity of the Tucana II galaxy. Image credit: Anirudh Chiti, MIT.

Huge Dark Matter Halo Spotted around Milky Way’s Dwarf Satellite Galaxy

Feb 2, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using with the Australian National University 1.3-m SkyMapper telescope have detected an extended dark matter halo around Tucana II, an ultrafaint...

This Hubble image shows UGC 3885, a spiral galaxy some 180 million light-years away in the constellation of Lynx. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Walsh.

Hubble Snaps Beautiful Image of UGC 3885

Feb 1, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking new photo of the spiral galaxy UGC 3885. This Hubble image shows UGC 3885,...

An artist’s impression of the five-planet system HD 108236. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Five Giant Planets Orbit Nearby Sun-Like Star

Jan 29, 2021 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using ESA’s CHaracterising ExOPlanet Satellite (CHEOPS) have discovered a fifth planet around the bright, Sun-like star HD 108236. An artist’s...

Siraj & Loeb explore the possibility that accretion flares resulting from the tidal disruption of small Oort Cloud bodies by a putative primordial black hole could power an observable optical signal that could be searched for with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / ESO.

Extreme Black Holes Have Gravitational Hair that Can Be Measured, Physicists Say

Jan 27, 2021 by News Staff

Gravitational-wave detectors can be used to measure gravitational-field hair of extreme black holes, according to a paper published in the journal Physical...

Agol et al. measure the density of the seven TRAPPIST-1 planets. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

TRAPPIST-1 Planets Have Remarkably Similar Densities, Study Shows

Jan 26, 2021 by News Staff

The seven rocky exoplanets orbiting TRAPPIST-1, an ultracool dwarf star located 38.8 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius, are about 8% less...

An artist’s impression of the TOI-178 system. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO / Spaceengine.org.

Nearby Orange Dwarf Hosts Unique System of Six Planets

Jan 25, 2021 by News Staff

The TOI-178 planetary system, a 7.1-billion-year-old system of six planets in the super-Earth to mini-Neptune range, five of which are locked in a rare...

Structure of TIC 168789840, a sextuple system of three eclipsing binaries arranged as inner quadruple AC and outer binary B. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TESS Discovers Sextuply-Eclipsing Six-Star System

Jan 25, 2021 by Natali Anderson

TIC 168789840 is the first known sextuple (six-star) system consisting of three eclipsing binaries. Structure of TIC 168789840, a sextuple system of three...

This Hubble image shows ESO 455-10, a planetary nebula located in the constellation of Scorpius. The color image is composed of near-infrared and optical observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / L. Stanghellini.

Hubble Spots Beautiful Planetary Nebula

Jan 25, 2021 by Enrico de Lazaro

NASA has released a spectacular photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the planetary nebula ESO 455-10. This Hubble image shows ESO 455-10,...

An artist’s illustration of the hot-Jupiter WASP-62b. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Cloudless Hot-Jupiter Exoplanet Spotted

Jan 22, 2021 by News Staff

A transiting gas giant called WASP-62b has a cloud- and haze-free atmosphere, according to new research. An artist’s illustration of the hot-Jupiter...

Carr et al. investigated how stupendously large black holes could form and potential limits to their size. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Stupendously Large Black Holes Could Be Hiding in Universe

Jan 22, 2021 by News Staff

If ‘stupendously large’ black holes, those with masses more than 100 billion times that of the Sun, exist in the Universe, they would provide a powerful...

An example of a gravitational lens found in the DESI Legacy Surveys data. There are four sets of lensed images in DESI-090.9854-35.9683, corresponding to four distinct background galaxies -- from the outermost giant red arc to the innermost bright blue arc, arranged in four concentric circles. All of them are gravitationally lensed by the orange galaxy at the very center. Image credit: NOIRLab.

Astronomers Discover 1,210 New Strong Gravitational Lenses

Jan 21, 2021 by News Staff

Using a deep residual neural network and data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) Legacy Imaging Surveys, astronomers have discovered...

Hubble Sheds New Light on Formation of Planetary Nebulae

Jan 20, 2021 by News Staff

New images of the Butterfly Nebula and the Jewel Bug Nebula taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are revealing information about how planetary...

This image shows the giant radio galaxy MGTC J095959.63+024608.6; in the background is the sky as seen in optical light; overlaid in red is the radio light from the giant radio galaxy, as seen by MeerKAT. Image credit: I. Heywood, University of Oxford / Rhodes University / South African Radio Astronomy Observatory / CC BY 4.0.

Two New Giant Radio Galaxies Discovered

Jan 20, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using the MeerKAT radio telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory in Cape Town, South Africa, have discovered two new radio...

An artist’s impression of a neutron star. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astrophysicists May Have Found Evidence of Long-Sought Axions

Jan 19, 2021 by News Staff

First theorized in the 1970s, axions are hypothetical particles that were proposed to preserve a time-reversal symmetry of the nuclear force. These particles...