Astronomy News

Powerful Black Hole at Heart of Phoenix Cluster’s Central Galaxy Surprises Astronomers

Composite image showing how powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster inflated huge ‘bubbles’ in the hot, ionized gas surrounding the galaxy (the cavities inside the blue region imaged by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory). Hugging the outside of these bubbles, ALMA discovered an unexpected trove of cold gas, the fuel for star formation (red). The background image is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / NASA / ESA / Hubble / CXC / MIT / H. Russell et al / M. McDonald et al / B. Saxton.
Feb 15, 2017 by News Staff

A University of Cambridge-led team of astronomers has discovered a surprising connection between a supermassive black hole and the giant galaxy where it resides: radio jets from the black hole — which normally suppress star formation — are stimulating the production of star-forming molecular gas in the galaxy’s halo. The research paper reporting this discovery has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org...

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An artist’s impression of PTFO8-8695 b, which is believed to orbit a star in the constellation Orion every 11 hours. Image credit: A. Passwaters / Rice University.

Astronomers Observe First Exoplanet-Induced Stellar Pulsations

Feb 14, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected strange pulsations in the outer shell of a star called HAT-P-2, and their best guess is that a closely orbiting exoplanet causes...

Artist’s concept of the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 411b. Image credit: Ricardo Ramirez.

Astronomers Reveal Catalog of Nearby Stars, Detect 114 Potential Exoplanets

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers today released the largest-ever compilation of exoplanet-detecting observations made with a technique called radial velocity. They also demonstrated...

This artist’s impression shows AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio. Image credit: M. Garlick / University of Warwick / ESO.

Astronomers Find First Ever White Dwarf Pulsar

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have identified AR Scorpii — a binary stellar system in the constellation Scorpius, 380 light-years from Earth — as the first example...

This Hubble image shows a small portion of the southern sky in the constellation of Tucana. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Scattered Stars, Galaxies in Tucana

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

This spectacular image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows part of the sky in the constellation of...

This artist’s impression shows Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, which at only 4.23 light-years is the closest star to our Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image between the exoplanet and Proxima itself. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Exoplanets in Habitable Zones of Active Red Dwarfs May Face Oxygen Loss

Feb 11, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Vladimir Airapetian, a solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has developed a model that estimates the oxygen...

This artist’s impression shows a massive, comet-like object falling towards a white dwarf. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Z. Levy, STScI.

Hubble Finds Extrasolar Kuiper Belt Object Ripped Apart by White Dwarf

Feb 9, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have found the first evidence of the remains of a Kuiper Belt object analog scattered around a white dwarf star. The research was published...

This artist’s conception shows an intermediate-mass black hole in the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae. Image credit: B. Kiziltan / T. Karacan.

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found at Center of Star Cluster 47 Tucanae

Feb 9, 2017 by News Staff

47 Tucanae — a huge, ancient globular star cluster about 15,300 light-years away from us — harbors a central black hole about 2,200 times more...

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, their stellar halos and the RR Lyrae bridge: pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the Clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars detected with the data from ESA’s Gaia satellite. Image credit: V. Belokurov / D. Erkal / A. Mellinger.

43,000-Light-Year-Long Stellar Bridge Connects Magellanic Clouds

Feb 8, 2017 by News Staff

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — the largest and most well-known dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s orbit — are connected by a 43,000...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7640, which lies in the constellation Andromeda, about 38.8 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 7640

Feb 6, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the galaxy NGC 7640. This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7640, which lies in...

In the heart of an active galaxy, matter falling toward a supermassive black hole creates jets of particles traveling near the speed of light. For active galaxies classified as blazars, one of these jets beams almost directly toward Earth. Image credit: NASA / Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab.

NASA’s Fermi Spacecraft Finds Five High Redshift Blazars

Feb 1, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope has spotted the five most distant gamma-ray blazars — a type of galaxy whose intense emissions are powered...

This spectacular image from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope shows the Cat’s Paw Nebula (upper right) and the Lobster Nebula (lower left); these dramatic objects are regions of active star formation where the hot young stars are causing the surrounding hydrogen gas to glow red; the very rich field of view also includes dark clouds of dust; with around two billion pixels this is one of the largest images ever released by ESO. Image credit: ESO.

Spectacular Photo from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope Shows Cat’s Paw and Lobster Nebulae

Feb 1, 2017 by News Staff

A gigantic new image from ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) gives a detailed view of the stellar nurseries NGC 6334 and NGC 6357. This spectacular image...

Hubble Frontier Fields view of a distant galaxy cluster. Image credit: NASA / ESA / HST Frontier Fields Team / STScI.

First Observational Evidence of Holographic Universe?

Jan 30, 2017 by News Staff

A ground-breaking study released in the journal Physical Review Letters (arXiv.org version) offers what its authors call ‘the first observational evidence...

This Hubble image shows the Calabash Nebula, which lies in the constellation of Puppis, about 5,000 light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots ‘Cosmic Calabash’

Jan 30, 2017 by Enrico de Lazaro

A stunning new image of a little-known protoplanetary nebula, the Calabash Nebula, has been captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This Hubble...

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.

Astronomers Use Gravitational Lensing to Measure Hubble Constant

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 —...

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...

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