Astronomy News

New Study Reveals Turbulent History of Andromeda Galaxy

Hot stars burn brightly in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the UV side of a familiar face. At 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy is our Milky Way's largest galactic neighbor. The galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across. The bands of blue-white making up the galaxy's striking rings are neighborhoods that harbor hot, young, massive stars. Dark blue-grey lanes of cooler dust show up starkly against these bright rings, tracing the regions where star formation is currently taking place in dense cloudy cocoons. Eventually, these dusty lanes will be blown away by strong stellar winds, as the forming stars ignite nuclear fusion in their cores. Meanwhile, the central orange-white ball reveals a congregation of cooler, old stars that formed long ago. When observed in visible light, the galaxy’s rings look more like spiral arms. The UV image shows that these arms more closely resemble the ring-like structure previously observed in infrared wavelengths with NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope; astronomers interpreted these rings as evidence that the galaxy was involved in a direct collision with its neighbor, Messier 32, more than 200 million years ago. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.
Jan 12, 2015 by News Staff

A study of the motions of different stellar populations in the Andromeda’s disk has revealed a violent history of mergers with dwarf galaxies in the galaxy’s recent past. Hot stars burn brightly in this image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing the UV side of a familiar face. At 2.5 million light-years away, the Andromeda galaxy is our Milky Way’s largest galactic neighbor. The galaxy spans 260,000 light-years across....

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Andromeda Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / ESA / University of Washington / PHAT team / J. Dalcanton / B. F. Williams / L. C. Johnson / R. Gendler.

Astronomers Snap Sharpest, Biggest Image Ever of Andromeda Galaxy

Jan 10, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers using the Advanced Camera for Surveys on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has obtained the sharpest image ever taken of our galactic...

This image shows the ancient globular cluster Terzan 5, home to PSR J1906+0746. Image credit: ESA / NASA/ Hubble.

Researchers Measure Space-Time Warp in Gravity of Binary Star

Jan 9, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astrophysicists headed by Dr Joeri van Leeuwen of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy and the University of Amsterdam has successfully...

This graphic shows how Hubble probed the light from the quasar PDS 456 to analyze the Fermi Bubbles. The quasar's light passed through one of the bubbles; imprinted on that light is information about the outflow's speed, composition, and eventually mass. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Field, STScI.

Astronomers Probe Milky Way’s Mysterious Fermi Bubbles

Jan 9, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have measured for the first time the velocity and composition of giant, balloon-like features known...

Eta Carinae's great eruption in the 1840s created the billowing Homunculus Nebula, imaged here by Hubble. Now about a light-year long, the expanding cloud contains enough material to make at least 10 copies of our Sun. Astronomers cannot yet explain what caused this eruption. Image credit: Jon Morse, University of Colorado / NASA.

Astronomers Zero in on Binary System Eta Carinae

Jan 8, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, have produced the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to date. Eta...

This image shows the Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation as seen in visible light, capturing the multi-colored glow of gas clouds, wispy tendrils of dark cosmic dust, and the rust-colored elephants’ trunks of the nebula’s famous pillars. The dust and gas in the pillars is seared by the intense radiation from young stars and eroded by strong winds from massive nearby stars. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Hubble Heritage Team.

Hubble Space Telescope Revisits Eagle Nebula’s Pillars of Creation

Jan 8, 2015 by News Staff

In celebration of its upcoming 25th anniversary, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has revisited the famous pillars, providing astronomers with a sharper...

This artistic rendering depicts an Earth-like exoplanet orbiting an evolved star that has formed a stunning planetary nebula; earlier in its life, this planet may have been like one of the eight newly discovered worlds orbiting in the habitable zones of their stars. Image credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA.

Kepler-438b: Astronomers Find Most Earth-Like Exoplanet Yet

Jan 8, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers led by Dr Guillermo Torres of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has discovered eight new extrasolar...

NGC 6819. Image credit: Roberto Mura / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Astronomers Uncover Relationship between Rotation Rates of Stars, Their Ages

Jan 6, 2015 by News Staff

Dr Soren Meibom, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and his colleagues from Germany and the United States say they can...

NGC 6535. Image credit: ESA / Hubble / NASA / Gilles Chapdelaine.

Hubble Zooms in on Globular Star Cluster NGC 6535

Jan 5, 2015 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have obtained a remarkable new view of a globular cluster called NGC 6535. NGC 6535. Image credit: ESA...

Spitzer Space Telescope Zooms in on Horsehead Nebula

Dec 26, 2014 by News Staff

NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has obtained an infrared image of the Horsehead, a famous dark nebula in the constellation of Orion. The famous Horsehead...

This Hubble image shows the galaxy IC 335 in front of a backdrop of distant galaxies. Image credit: ESA / NASA / Hubble.

Astronomers Snap Dazzling New Image of Edge-On Galaxy IC 335

Dec 26, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of the edge-on lenticular galaxy IC 335. This Hubble image shows the...

This image shows the newly discovered dwarf galaxy Kks3. The core of the galaxy is the right hand object at the top center of the image, with its stars spreading out over a large section around it; the left hand of the two objects is a much nearer globular star cluster. Image credit: Dimitry Makarov.

Kks3: Hubble Discovers New Neighbor Galaxy to Milky Way

Dec 23, 2014 by News Staff

A new neighbor of our Milky Way Galaxy has been discovered with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This...

X-rays stream off the Sun in this image. The NuSTAR data, seen in green and blue, reveal solar high-energy emission (green shows energies between 2 and 3 kiloelectron volts, and blue shows energies between 3 and 5 kiloelectron volts). The high-energy X-rays come from gas heated to above 3 million degrees. The red channel represents UV light captured by SDO at wavelengths of 171 angstroms, and shows the presence of lower-temperature material in the solar atmosphere at 1 million degrees. This image shows that some of the hotter emission tracked by NuSTAR is coming from different locations in the active regions and the coronal loops than the cooler emission shown in the SDO image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / GSFC.

NASA’s NuSTAR Spacecraft Captures its First Image of Sun

Dec 23, 2014 by News Staff

NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) spacecraft – a $180 million black-hole hunter – has obtained its first picture...

HIP 116454b: Astronomers Find Super-Earth Orbiting Orange Dwarf

Dec 19, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers using NASA’s Kepler space telescope has discovered a new exoplanet, named HIP 116454b. This artistic impression...

This Hubble/ALMA composite image shows the nearby lenticular galaxy NGC 1266; ALMA data are orange. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / ALMA / NRAO / ESO / NAOJ.

‘Perfect Storm’ Prevents Star Formation in Lenticular Galaxy NGC 1266

Dec 18, 2014 by News Staff

By observing the dust and gas at the center of NGC 1266, a team of astronomers led by Dr Katherine Alatalo of the California Institute of Technology in...

Star cluster Messier 47. Image credit: ESO.

Astronomers Capture New Image of Open Star Cluster Messier 47

Dec 17, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory have snapped a spectacular new image of a...

Mercury appears to undergo seasonal meteor showers. Image credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Mercury Experiences Seasonal Meteor Showers, Say NASA Scientists

Dec 17, 2014 by News Staff

Mercury – the smallest planet in our Solar System – appears to get hit by recurring meteor showers, possibly associated with Comet 2P/Encke. Mercury...

X-ray data from Chandra have revealed that NGC 2207 (left) and IC 2163, currently in the process of colliding with one another, have produced one of the most bountiful collections of super bright X-ray lights called ultraluminous X-ray sources. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / SAO / S.Mineo et al; optical – NASA / STScI; infrared: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Space Observatories Zero in on Colliding Galaxy Pair NGC 2207 – IC 2163

Dec 14, 2014 by News Staff

A spectacular cosmic collision between the spiral galaxies NGC 2207 and IC 2163 has been caught in a composite image generated by NASA’s Chandra X-ray...

This is an artist impression of the protoplanetary disk around HD 107146. Image credit: A. Angelich / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Discover Hundreds of Pluto-Size Objects Orbiting Star HD 107146

Dec 12, 2014 by News Staff

U.S. astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have discovered an entire family of Pluto-size planetesimals around a nearby young...

This Hubble composite image shows a ring of dark matter in the galaxy cluster ZwCl0024+1652; the ring-like structure is evident in the blue map of the cluster's dark matter distribution; the map is superimposed on a Hubble image of the cluster. Image credit: NASA / ESA / M.J. Jee and H. Ford, Johns Hopkins University.

X-Ray Signal from Andromeda, Other Galaxies Could Be Evidence of Dark Matter

Dec 12, 2014 by News Staff

European scientists have detected a mysterious photon emission in X-ray spectra of the Andromeda galaxy, the Draco dwarf galaxy and some other galaxies...

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