Astronomy News

NASA’s WISE Spacecraft Spots Two New Near-Earth Objects

An artist’s rendition of 2016 WF9 as it passes Jupiter’s orbit inbound toward the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Dec 30, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered two celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood: 2016 WF9 and C/2016 U1 NEOWISE. An artist’s rendition of 2016 WF9 as it passes Jupiter’s orbit inbound toward the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech. A near-Earth object (NEO) called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project — the asteroid-and-comet-hunting portion of NASA’s WISE mission...

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Our Sun is the most familiar example of a main-sequence star. Image credit: NASA.

Mysterious Star KIC 8462852 is Near a Continuous Phase Transition, Astronomers Say

Dec 29, 2016 by News Staff

A new study by astronomers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, links the unexplained changes...

ESO’s New Technology Telescope Views Messier 98

Dec 28, 2016 by Natali Anderson

This image snapped by ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT), a 3.58-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows the edge-on spiral galaxy...

This image shows the megamaser galaxy LEDA 58817, which lies in the constellation Ophiuchus, about 370 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Spots Cosmic Megamaser

Dec 26, 2016 by News Staff

NASA has released a stunning image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the megamaser galaxy LEDA 58817. This image shows the megamaser galaxy...

This Hubble image shows NGC 248, a nebula located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The data used in this image were taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in September 2015. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / K. Sandstrom, University of California, San Diego / SMIDGE Team.

Hubble Space Telescope Spies NGC 248

Dec 21, 2016 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a spectacular image of NGC 248, a glowing pink nebula in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This Hubble image...

Light and color would look different on a planet orbiting a tiny red star, like this artist’s impression of Proxima b. The Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone is the nearest exoplanet to our Sun. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Are Exoplanets Like Those in ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ Really Out There?

Dec 21, 2016 by NASA

In the ‘Star Wars’ universe, ice, ocean and desert planets burst from the darkness as your ship drops out of light speed. But these worlds might be...

World’s Largest Digital Survey of Visible Universe Released

Dec 20, 2016 by News Staff

The largest digital survey of the visible Universe, mapping billions of stars and galaxies, has been publicly released. Pan-STARRS sky survey. Image credit:...

This composite image of NGC 6357 contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the ROSAT telescope (purple), infrared data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope (orange), and optical data from the SuperCosmos Sky Survey (blue) made by the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / PSU / L.Townsley et al; optical - UKIRT; infrared – NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Releases Spectacular Image of NGC 6357

Dec 20, 2016 by News Staff

NASA has released an amazing composite image of NGC 6357, a region where radiation from hot, young stars is energizing the surrounding gas and dust. This...

This image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4707, which lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, about 22 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Looks at Nearby Spiral

Dec 19, 2016 by News Staff

The Hubble team has released a stunning image snapped by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the bright spiral galaxy NGC 4707. This image shows the...

Neptune-mass planets like the one shown in this artist’s rendering may be the most common in the icy regions of planetary systems; beyond a certain distance from a young star, water and other substances remain frozen, leading to an abundant population of icy objects that can collide and form the cores of new planets; in the foreground, an icy body left over from this period drifts past the planet. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.

‘Cold Neptunes’ are Common, New Study Says

Dec 16, 2016 by News Staff

A new statistical study of exoplanets found by an innovative technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that so-called ‘cold Neptunes’ are...

This is an artist impression of the whirlwind being lifted up from the protoplanetary disk around the 100,000-year-old protostar TMC1A. Image credit: Per Bjerkeli / David Lamm / BOID.

Protostars Shoot Out Powerful Whirlwinds

Dec 15, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (ALMA) to observe the early stages in the formation of a new star system. For the...

ALMA image of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HD 163296 as seen in dust. New observations suggested that two planets are in orbit around the star. These planets, which are not yet fully formed, revealed themselves by the dual imprint they left in both the dust and the gas portions of the star’s protoplanetary disk. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / AUI / NSF / A. Isella / B. Saxton.

Evidence of Forming Giant Planets Discovered 400 Light-Years from Earth

Dec 13, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found compelling evidence that two infant planets — each about the...

This artist’s impression depicts a Kerr (rapidly spinning) black hole, surrounded by an accretion disc: this thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole; shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led to a burst of light, resembling a supernova explosion. Image credit: ESO / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Kerr Black Hole Eating Sun-like Star Explains Superluminous Explosion ASASSN-15lh

Dec 12, 2016 by News Staff

ASASSN-15lh, an extremely bright explosion in a massive galaxy 3.82 billion light-years away, was thought to be the most luminous supernova ever seen....

In this artist’s illustration, HAT-P-7b closely orbits a star that’s 1,044 light-years from Earth. A companion star (top right) and a candidate planet (foreground) lie in the distance. Image credit: NAOJ.

Scientists Find Evidence of Weather Change on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet HAT-P-7b

Dec 12, 2016 by News Staff

Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on an extrasolar gaseous planet called HAT-P-7b, which is 40% larger than Jupiter and orbits a star...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy IC 5201, which lies in constellation of Grus, approximately 35.5 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Observes Barred Spiral Galaxy IC 5201

Dec 12, 2016 by Natali Anderson

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced an incredibly detailed image of IC 5201, a galaxy in the southern constellation of Grus. This Hubble image...

The distorted galaxy in the simulation (main image) results from a collision and merger between two galaxies. Astronomers think such a merger could be the reason why SPT0346-52 is having such a boom of stellar construction. Once the two galaxies collide, gas near the center of the merged galaxy (shown as the bright region in the center of the simulation) is compressed, producing a burst of new stars. The composite inset shows X-ray data from Chandra (blue), short wavelength infrared data from Hubble (green), infrared light from Spitzer (red) at longer wavelengths, and infrared data from ALMA (magenta) at even longer wavelengths. There is no blue at the center of the image, showing that Chandra did not detect any X-rays that could have signaled the presence of a growing black hole. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / University of Florida / J. Ma et al; optical – NASA / STScI; infrared – NASA / JPL-Caltech; radio – ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ALMA; simulation - Simons Foundation / Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation / Flatiron Institute / Caltech / C. Hayward & P. Hopkins.

Astronomers Find Hyper-Starburst Galaxy 12.7 Billion Light-Years Away

Dec 9, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to show that a recently-discovered lensed...

Composite view of L2 Puppis in visible light. Image credit: Kervella et al / CNRS / University of Chile / Observatory of Paris / LESIA / ESO / ALMA.

Massive Planet-Like Object Found Circling Nearby Red Giant Star

Dec 8, 2016 by News Staff

A team of astronomers has discovered a giant object — an enormous, Jupiter-like exoplanet or a low-mass brown dwarf — orbiting an ageing red...

This map of dark matter was obtained from data from the KiDS survey, using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope. It reveals an expansive web of dense (light) and empty (dark) regions. This image is one out of five patches of the sky observed by KiDS. The invisible dark matter is seen rendered in pink, covering an area of sky around 420 times the size of the full Moon. This image reconstruction was made by analyzing the light collected from over 3 million galaxies more than 6 billion light-years away. The observed galaxy images were warped by the gravitational pull of dark matter as the light traveled through the Universe. Some small dark regions, with sharp boundaries, appear in this image. They are the locations of bright stars and other nearby objects that get in the way of the observations of more distant galaxies and are hence masked out in the map as no weak-lensing signal can be measured in these areas. Image credit: Kilo-Degree Survey Collaboration / H. Hildebrandt & B. Giblin / ESO.

Deep Space Images Shed More Light on Dark Matter

Dec 7, 2016 by News Staff

An international research team led by Dr. Massimo Viola from the Leiden Observatory and Dr. Hendrik Hildebrandt from the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the highly inclined spiral galaxy NGC 4388. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Spectacular Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 4388

Dec 5, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a colorful photo of NGC 4388, an active spiral galaxy at the core of the Virgo Cluster. This image from the...

B.H.C. Emonts et al found that the Spiderweb, a massive galaxy in the center of a distant protocluster, is forming from a large reservoir of molecular gas. In this artist’s conception of the protocluster, the protogalaxies are shown in white and pink, and the blue indicates the location of the carbon monoxide gas. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Astronomers Witness Birth of Massive Cluster Galaxy

Dec 3, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Massive galaxies may grow from cold molecular gas that condenses as stars rather than forming in violent mergers, according to an international team of...

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