Astronomy News

Spiral Arms Around Young Stars May Be Evidence of Giant Planets, Scientists Say

Right: observations taken by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope show a protoplanetary disk around the young star MWC 758; the disk has two spiral arms that extend over 10 billion miles from the star. Left: a computer model reproduces the two-spiral-arm structure; the X is the location of a putative planet. Image credit: NASA / ESA / ESO / M. Benisty et al / Ruobing Dong / Zhaohuan Zhu.
Oct 30, 2015 by News Staff

Spiral-arm-like features seen around two newborn stars, SAO 206462 and MWC 758, may be evidence for the presence of giant, unseen planets, says a team of astronomers led by Ruobing Dong of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Right: observations taken by the ESO’s Very Large Telescope show a protoplanetary disk around the young star MWC 758; the disk has two spiral arms that extend over 10 billion miles from the star. Left: a computer model reproduces...

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An artist’s conception of a gas giant planet and its moons. Image credit: Greg Bacon, STScI / NASA.

Jupiter May Have Ejected Solar System’s Fifth Giant Planet, Astronomers Say

Oct 30, 2015 by News Staff

A close encounter with Jupiter approximately 4 billion years ago may have resulted in another giant planet’s ejection from the Solar System, according...

A supermassive black hole is depicted in this artist’s concept, surrounded by a swirling disk of material falling onto it. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Find Clue to How Supermassive Black Holes Emit X-ray Flares

Oct 29, 2015 by News Staff

In 2014, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the agency’s Swift satellite observed an X-flare from the supermassive black hole...

This diagram shows the locations of the newly-discovered Cepheids in an artist’s rendering of our Milky Way Galaxy; the yellow star indicates the position of our Solar System. Image credit: ESO / Microsoft WorldWide Telescope.

Astronomers Discover New Component of Milky Way Galaxy

Oct 28, 2015 by News Staff

Using data from the VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea Survey (VVV) ESO Public Survey, astronomers have discovered a previously unknown component of the...

Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) on February 22, 2015. An international team of scientists has found more than twenty molecules in the comet, including ethyl alcohol and a simple sugar. Image credit: Fabrice Noel.

Astronomers Detect Ethyl Alcohol, Sugar in Atmosphere of Comet Lovejoy

Oct 26, 2015 by Natali Anderson

In a paper in the journal Science Advances, astronomers report the detection of 21 different organic molecules in gas from Comet Lovejoy, including the...

This image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys shows the quadruple star system DI Cha. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, geckzilla.org.

Hubble Space Telescope Zeros in on Quadruple Star System

Oct 26, 2015 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA/Hubble Heritage Team has released a stunning image of a complex star system known as DI Cha. This image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for...

New images from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show the faintest and earliest known galaxies in the Universe. This image shows the galaxy cluster MACSJ0717.5+3745 (MACS0717). It is one of the most massive galaxy clusters known, and it is also the largest known gravitational lens. Of all of the galaxy clusters known and measured, this cluster lenses the largest area of the sky. Image credit: NASA / ESA / HST Frontier Fields Team / STScI.

Astronomers Discover 252 Ultra-Faint Dwarf Galaxies in Early Universe

Oct 22, 2015 by News Staff

Using observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have discovered over 250 ultra-faint dwarf galaxies in three extremely distant...

This small section of the Milky Way mosaic shows the star system Eta Carinae. Image credit: Lehrstuhl für Astrophysik / Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Astronomers Create 46 Billion Pixel Mosaic Image of Milky Way

Oct 22, 2015 by News Staff

The newly-released photographic mosaic of our Galaxy is the largest astronomical image ever created, according to a team of astronomers from Germany and...

In this artist’s conception, a dwarf planet vaporizes as it orbits a white dwarf star. Image credit: Mark A. Garlick / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

NASA’s Kepler K2 Mission Discovers Planet-Destroying White Dwarf Star

Oct 22, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has uncovered evidence of a minor planet being torn apart as it spirals around WD 1145+017, a white dwarf located...

ASASSN-14li: X-Ray Telescopes Catch Supermassive Black Hole Shredding Star to Pieces

Oct 22, 2015 by News Staff

Using a trio of X-ray telescopes, astronomers have observed material being blown away from a supermassive black hole after it tore a star apart. The event...

This artist’s impression shows VFTS 352 - the hottest and most massive double star system to date where the two components are in contact and sharing material. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

VFTS 352: Astronomers Spot Hottest, Most Massive Overcontact Binary

Oct 21, 2015 by News Staff

New observations from ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed that a binary star system called VFTS 352 is among the most extreme and strangest yet...

An artist’s impression of innumerable potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets that have yet to be born over the next trillion years in the Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Say Most Earth-Like Exoplanets Have Yet to Be Born

Oct 21, 2015 by News Staff

When the Solar System was born about 4.6 billion years ago only 8% of the potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets that will ever form in the Universe...

This image shows XX Triangulum (center), a red giant star about 1,500 light-years away. Image credit: NASA / IPAC / 2MASS / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Newly-Released Video Shows Evolution of Starspots on Red Giant

Oct 20, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany, has created a video that shows the evolution of stellar spots on the...

WASP-47 (center). Image credit: DSS2 / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

WASP-47: Two New Exoplanets Found Orbiting Hot Jupiter-Hosting Star

Oct 20, 2015 by News Staff

A team of U.S. astronomers has made a surprising discovery using data collected by NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission: a star called WASP-47, a previously known...

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 94. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Stunning Image of Messier 94

Oct 19, 2015 by Natali Anderson

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of Messier 94. This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the...

This image shows part of the Coalsack Nebula, an opaque interstellar dust cloud that obscures the light of the background Milky Way stars; dust grains in the cloud redden the starlight that reaches us by absorbing blue light preferentially. Image credit: ESO.

ESO Astronomers Zoom in on Mysterious Coalsack Nebula

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

This image from the Wide Field Imager, a camera installed on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows part of the huge...

This global map of Jupiter was made during the Hubble OPAL Program. The map was observed on 19 January 2015, from 2:00 UTC to 12:30 UTC. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, GSFC / M. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / G. Orton, JPL-Caltech.

New Global Maps of Jupiter Unveiled

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley,...

Composite image of an edge-on spiral galaxy with a radio halo produced by fast-moving particles in the galaxy’s magnetic field. In this image, the large, grey-blue area is a single image formed by combining the radio halos of 30 different galaxies. At the center is a visible-light image of one of the galaxies, NGC 5775, made using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This visible-light image shows only the inner part of the galaxy’s star-forming region, outer portions of which extend horizontally into the area of the radio halo. Image credit: Jayanne English, University of Manitoba / Judith Irwin & Theresa Wiegert, Queen’s University / CHANG-ES Consortium / NRAO / AUI / NSF / NASA / STScI.

Giant Radio Halos around Spiral Galaxies More Common than Thought

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

Using one of the world’s greatest radio observatories, National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array (VLA), a group of astronomers has found...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4639. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Snaps Beautiful Image of Barred Spiral Galaxy

Oct 12, 2015 by News Staff

The Hubble team has released a stunning photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of a galaxy known as NGC 4639. This Hubble image shows the barred...

This image of part of an edge-on disk around AU Microscopii reveals wave-like features. Image credit: NASA / ESA / ESO / A. Boccaletti, Paris Observatory.

Strange, Fast-Moving Structures Spotted around Nearby Star AU Microscopii

Oct 8, 2015 by News Staff

Using images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered unique structures...

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