Astronomy News

Astronomers Use Gravitational Lensing to Measure Hubble Constant

HE0435-1223, located in the centre of this wide-field image, is among the five best lensed quasars discovered to date. The foreground galaxy creates four almost evenly distributed images of the distant quasar around it. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S.H. Suyu et al.
Jan 27, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers from the international H0LiCOW (H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL’s Wellspring) collaboration have made a new measurement of the Hubble constant — a fundamental quantity that describes the rate at which the Universe is expanding — and it doesn’t quite line up with a different estimate of the same number. That discrepancy could hint at ‘new physics’ beyond the Standard Cosmological Model. RXJ1131-1231 is among the five best lensed...

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This SDSS image shows a group of dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound together. The detection of seven such groups lends support to the idea that large galaxies formed by the collision and merger of smaller galaxies in the early Universe. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Researchers Find Seven Isolated Clusters of Dwarf Galaxies

Jan 26, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by National Radio Astronomy Observatory and University of Virginia astrophysicist Sabrina Stierwalt has spotted...

This Hubble image shows the cometary dwarf galaxy NGC 4861, which lies in the constellation of Canes Venatici, about 22.8 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Spies Cometary Galaxy NGC 4861

Jan 23, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the cometary dwarf galaxy NGC 4861. This Hubble image shows the cometary dwarf...

Astronomers Characterize Wolf 1061 Planetary System

Jan 20, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A research team led by San Francisco State University astronomer Stephen Kane has obtained new observations of Wolf 1061, known to host at least three...

An artist’s impression showing the increasing effect of ram-pressure stripping in removing gas from the spiral galaxy NGC 4921 and its satellite galaxies. Image credit: ICRAR / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA.

‘Ram-Pressure Stripping’ Shuts Off Star Formation in Galaxies, Astronomers Say

Jan 18, 2017 by News Staff

According to a new study published this week in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, a phenomenon called ram-pressure stripping is more...

A map of the whole disc of the Sun was also made with a single ALMA antenna, using a technique called fast-scanning, at a wavelength of 1.25 mm. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO.

ALMA Captures Its First Images of Sun

Jan 17, 2017 by News Staff

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope has been used to study the Sun for the first time. The new ALMA images reveal otherwise...

This composite image shows IC 3639, a galaxy with an active galactic nucleus. Image credit: ESO / NASA / JPL-Caltech / STScI.

NuSTAR Finds Two Enormous Black Holes in Milky Way’s Neighborhood

Jan 17, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) mission has identified two gas-enshrouded supermassive black holes, located at the centers of nearby...

This Hubble image shows part of the sky in the constellation of Sagittarius. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Sees Brilliant Stars in Sagittarius

Jan 16, 2017 by News Staff

This colorful view of Milky Way was captured when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope pointed its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) towards the constellation...

The six most common elements of life on Earth (including more than 97% of the mass of a human body) are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus. The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star. The human body on the left uses the same color coding to evoke the important role these elements play in different parts of our bodies, from oxygen in our lungs to phosphorous in our bones (although in reality all elements are found all across the body). In the background is an artist’s impression of the Galaxy, with cyan dots to show the APOGEE measurements of the oxygen abundance in different stars; brighter dots indicate higher oxygen abundance. Image credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital Inc / SDSS.

Astronomers Map ‘Elements of Life’ in Milky Way Galaxy

Jan 14, 2017 by News Staff

At the 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 5, 2017, astronomers from the SDSS/APOGEE (Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Apache Point Observatory...

Stellar streams around the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, SSC & Caltech.

Milky Way’s Most Distant Stars Might Be Ripped from Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy

Jan 12, 2017 by News Staff

Milky Way’s 11 most distant stars are located roughly 300,000 light-years away from us. According to a team of astronomers at Harvard University, five...

An artist’s rendition of interior compositions of planets around Kepler-102 and Kepler-407. The picture shows what minerals are likely to occur several different depths. An exoplanet in orbit around Kepler-102 is Earth-like, dominated by olivine minerals, whereas a planet around Kepler-407 is dominated by garnet, so less likely to have plate tectonics. Image credit: Robin Dienel / Carnegie Institution.

Garnet Exoplanets Exist, But Can They Be Habitable?

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers and geoscientists from the United States and Brazil have joined forces to study the mix of major rock-building elements in exoplanet-hosting...

This artist’s impression shows a Milky Way-type galaxy, surrounded by a large halo of blue, faint light, made of Lyman-alpha photons. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Photons Struggle to Escape Early Milky Way-Type Galaxies

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has discovered enormous halos of blue, faint light — made of so-called Lyman-alpha photons — around early...

This image shows the closest stellar system to the Sun, the bright double star Alpha Centauri AB and its distant and faint companion Proxima Centauri. Image credit: ESO / B. Tafreshi, twanight.org / Digitized Sky Survey 2 / Davide De Martin / Mahdi Zamani.

ESO Joins Breakthrough Initiatives to Search for New Exoplanets in Alpha Centauri System

Jan 10, 2017 by News Staff

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has signed an agreement with the Breakthrough Initiatives to adapt ESO’s Very Large Telescope instrumentation...

Earth-Moon System as Seen from Mars Orbit

Jan 9, 2017 by News Staff

This image composite combines the best Earth image with the best Moon image from four sets of images acquired on November 20, 2016, by the High Resolution...

This Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys image shows the spiral galaxy LEDA 1245565, which lies in the constellation Virgo, about one billion light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Spies Beautiful Spiral Galaxy

Jan 9, 2017 by News Staff

NASA has released a stunning image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy LEDA 1245565. This Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys image...

This illustration shows several comets speeding across a vast protoplanetary disk of gas and dust and heading straight for the youthful, central star HD 172555. These exocomets will eventually plunge into the star and vaporize. HD 172555 represents the third extrasolar system where astronomers have detected doomed, wayward comets. All of the systems are young, under 40 million years old. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Feild & G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Detect Exocomets Falling into HD 172555

Jan 8, 2017 by News Staff

Exocomets are plunging into HD 172555, a nearby young star surrounded by a debris disk, according to a team of astronomers led by Carol Grady of NASA’s...

PGC 1000714 (center). Image credit: Ryan Beauchemin.

Double-Ringed Elliptical Galaxy Spotted 372 Million Light-Years Away

Jan 6, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have spotted for the first time an elliptical galaxy with two fairly round rings. PGC 1000714 (center). Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques...

The globally distributed dishes of the European VLBI Network are linked with each other and the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, www.artsource.nl.

Repeating ‘Fast Radio Burst’ Found to Originate from Extremely Distant Dwarf Galaxy

Jan 5, 2017 by News Staff

A large international team of astronomers has uncovered the cosmological source of a repeating ‘fast radio burst’ known as FRB 121102. The globally...

This image of Orion A is composed of near-infrared observations from ESO’s VISTA survey telescope. Image credit: ESO / VISION Survey.

VISTA Captures Detailed Image of Orion A

Jan 4, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

This striking image, captured by ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), shows the Orion A molecular cloud, the nearest known...

Hubble Captures Stunning Image of LEDA 52270

Jan 2, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of LEDA 52270, a combination of two gas-rich spiral galaxies. This image, taken with the Advanced...

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