Astronomy News

Kepler 11145123 is Most Spherical Natural Object Ever Seen, Astronomers Say

Kepler 11145123 is the roundest natural object ever measured in the Universe. Stellar oscillations imply a difference in radius between the equator and the poles of only 3 km. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick.
Nov 18, 2016 by News Staff

Kepler 11145123, a slowly rotating star roughly 5,000 light-years away, is the most spherical natural object ever measured, more spherical than the Sun, says an international team of astronomers. Kepler 11145123. Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD. The team, led by Dr. Laurent Gizon, an astronomer with the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research and the University of Göttingen, was able to measure the oblateness...

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An artist’s concept of Gliese 536b orbiting its star, 33 light-years from Earth. Image credit: Gabriel Perez / Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias.

Gliese 536b: Super-Earth Found Orbiting Nearby Star

Nov 18, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of astronomers has discovered a super-Earth planet in orbit around Gliese 536, a red dwarf star approximately 33 light-years away. An...

This Hubble image shows the dwarf irregular galaxy NGC 4789A. The image also reveals numerous other galaxies, far more distant, that appear as fuzzy shapes spread across the image. The colors in this image have been deliberately exaggerated to emphasize the mix of blue and red stars. The blue stars are bright, hot and massive stars that have formed relatively recently, whereas the red stars are much older. The presence of both tells us that stars have been forming in this galaxy throughout its history. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Snaps Breathtaking Image of Little-Known Dwarf Galaxy

Nov 14, 2016 by News Staff

NGC 4789A, a small galaxy approximately 14 million light-years away, is the subject of this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This Hubble...

This illustration depicts a newly discovered brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Find Brown Dwarf 16,300 Light-Years Away

Nov 11, 2016 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers has spotted a brown dwarf orbiting a K-type dwarf star approximately 16,300 light-years away. The object was discovered...

Artist’s impression of the dust disk and a forming Neptune-like planet around TW Hydrae. Image credit: NAOJ.

ESO’s Exoplanet Hunter Spots Curious Features in Planet-Forming Disks around Three Young Stars

Nov 9, 2016 by News Staff

New observations with SPHERE, an advanced exoplanet-hunting instrument on the Very Large Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, have revealed striking...

This image, a composite of data from ALMA and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows a very rare cosmic sight: a pair of interacting galaxies that have taken on an ocular structure. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / M. Kaufman.

Colliding Galaxies Produce Bizarre Eye-Shaped Structure

Nov 8, 2016 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the United States, France and the UK has observed a tsunami of stars and gas that is crashing midway through the disk of the...

CSIRO’s Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. Image credit: Shaun Amy.

Breakthrough Listen: Parkes Radio Telescope Turns to Proxima b

Nov 8, 2016 by News Staff

Breakthrough Listen, the largest ever research program aimed at finding evidence of advanced civilizations beyond Earth, today announced its first observations...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the lenticular galaxy NGC 1222. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 1222

Nov 7, 2016 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this incredible image of NGC 1222, a large lenticular galaxy with a starburst nucleus. This image from...

Left: this deep Hubble image of the galaxy cluster ZwCl 1715.5+4229 (also known as ZwCl 8193) shows the full extent of the giant galaxy 2MASX 17171926+4226571 and some of its gravitationally lensed background galaxies. The white ‘X’ marks the VLBA radio position, the white ‘+’ marks the Hubble optical position of the giant galaxy’s core, and the white box bounds the zoomed image at right. Right: this shallower zoomed Hubble image of the galaxy cluster reveals the core of the giant galaxy, the smaller galaxy, several cluster galaxies, and extended interaction debris. The Hubble position of the giant galaxy’s core is marked by the white ‘+,’ and optical identification of B3 1715+425 is enclosed by a white circle centered on its Hubble position. Image credit: J.J. Condon et al / NASA / ESA / Hubble / NSF / VLBA.

Astronomers Find ‘Nearly Naked’ Supermassive Black Hole Two Billion Light-Years Away

Nov 3, 2016 by News Staff

A team of scientists led by National Radio Astronomy Observatory astronomer James Condon has found the shredded remains of a small galaxy that passed through...

This image, taken by ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shows the region R18 within the Carina Nebula. The massive stars within the star formation region slowly destroy the pillars of dust and gas from which they are born. Image credit: A. McLeod / ESO.

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Sees ‘Pillars of Destruction’ within Carina Nebula

Nov 2, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have observed giant pillar-like structures within the Carina Nebula, a huge star-formation region...

Asteroid 2016 HO3 has an orbit around the Sun that keeps it as a constant companion of our planet. This is an artist’s impression of an asteroid. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick, Space-art.co.uk / University of Warwick / University of Cambridge.

2016 TB57: Astronomers Identify 15,000th Near-Earth Asteroid

Oct 31, 2016 by News Staff

An international effort to find and catalogue the multitude of so-called near-Earth asteroids has reached a milestone: 15,000 discovered — with many...

This Hubble image shows the central region of the Crab Nebula. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com / M. Weisskopf, Marshall Space Flight Center.

Spectacular New Hubble Image Reveals Crab Nebula’s Pulsing Heart

Oct 31, 2016 by News Staff

A stunning new image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals the ‘pulsing heart’ of one of the most beautiful and well-studied objects...

Astronomers Snap Picture of Giant Exoplanet 1,200 Light-Years Away

Oct 31, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

An international team of astronomers has discovered a giant extrasolar planet orbiting a young star called CVSO 30. Not only have the scientists detected...

This artist’s concept illustrates how KSw 71 compares with the Sun. Both stars are shown to scale. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.

Astronomers Find Group of Fast-Spinning, X-ray Active Stars

Oct 29, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using observations from NASA’s Kepler and Swift space observatories have spotted 18 fast-spinning stars that produce X-rays at more than...

This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image to the upper-right of Proxima itself. Proxima b is a little more massive than the Earth and orbits in the habitable zone around its star, where the temperature is suitable for liquid water to exist on its surface. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Proxima b Could Be Habitable, Astrophysicists Say

Oct 28, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of astrophysicists from France and the United States has determined that the surface properties of Proxima Centauri b — an...

Combined ALMA and VLA image of the L1448 IRS3B system, with two young stars at the center and a third distant from them; spiral structure in the dusty disk surrounding them indicates instability in the disk. Image credit: Bill Saxton / ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Rare Triple Protostar System Spotted 750 Light-Years Away

Oct 27, 2016 by News Staff

A triple protostar system surrounded by a disk with a spiral structure has been observed by astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter...

GLEAM view of Milky Way’s center in radio color: red indicates the lowest frequencies, green indicates the middle frequencies and blue the highest frequencies; each dot is a galaxy, with around 300,000 radio galaxies observed as part of the survey. Image credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker / GLEAM Team.

Murchison Widefield Array Views Universe in Radio Color

Oct 26, 2016 by News Staff

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a low-frequency (80-300 MHz) radio telescope located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia,...

This image shows a bright gaseous halo around the quasar Q0042-2627. Image credit: Elena Borisova et al.

Astronomers Find Giant Gaseous Halos around Distant Quasars

Oct 26, 2016 by News Staff

A group of astronomers led by ETH Zurich scientist Elena Borisova has spotted giant clouds of glowing intergalactic gas around distant quasars. This image...

This Chandra image shows the location in the elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 of a remarkable source that dramatically flares in X-rays unlike any ever seen. Low, medium, and high-energy X-rays are colored red, green, and blue. Image credit: NASA / CXC / UA / J. Irwin et al.

Two Mysterious X-ray Sources Spotted in Nearby Elliptical Galaxies

Oct 25, 2016 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Chandra and ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescopes, astronomers have found a pair of remarkable sources that dramatically flare in...

Hubble view of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / J. Blakeslee, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory / H. Ford, JHU.

Study: Universe is Expanding with Constant Velocity

Oct 25, 2016 by News Staff

Hubble view of the galaxy cluster Abell 1689. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / J. Blakeslee, Dominion Astrophysical Observatory...

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