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This image is a composite of several images taken during two separate Titan flybys in 2006. The large circular feature near the center of Titan's disk may be the remnant of a very old impact basin. The mountain ranges to the southeast of the circular feature, and the long dark, linear feature to the northwest of the old impact scar may have resulted from tectonic activity on Titan caused by the energy released when the impact occurred. Image credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona.

Astronomers Intrigued by Mysterious Zones of Organic Molecules on Titan

Oct 23, 2014 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers studying the chemical make-up of the atmosphere on Saturn’s moon Titan has revealed large zones of two organic...

This artist’s impression shows exocomets orbiting Beta Pictoris. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada.

500 Exocomets Found Orbiting Nearby Star Beta Pictoris

Oct 22, 2014 by News Staff

French astronomers using the HARPS instrument on the ESO 3.6-m telescope at the La Silla Observatory in Chile have discovered nearly 500 comets around...

The iso-propyl cyanide molecule and its straight-chain isomer, normal-propyl cyanide, were both detected with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in the star-forming region Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2). Sgr A* is a complex radio source at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: MPIfR / A. Weiß / University of Cologne / M. Koerber / A. Belloche.

Iso-Propyl Cyanide Detected in Star-Forming Region Sagittarius B2

Oct 21, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array have detected an unusual carbon-based molecule called iso-propyl cyanide (i-C3H7CN)...

Composite image of Uranus. Image credit: Marcos van Dam / W. M. Keck Observatory.

Astronomers Discover Extrasolar Analog of Uranus 25,000 Light-Years Away

Oct 16, 2014 by News Staff

An ice giant that resembles our Solar System’s Uranus has been discovered about 25,000 light-years from Earth, by a multinational team of scientists...

This image show the star-forming galaxy SDSS J092159.38+450912.3. Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Star-Forming Galaxy Could Help Explain Origin of Universe’s First Light

Oct 11, 2014 by News Staff

In an effort to better understand how the Universe evolved as the first stars were formed, U.S. astronomers led by Dr Sanchayeeta Borthakur of Johns Hopkins...

In this illustration the hot-Jupiter WASP-43b orbits its parent star in one of the closest orbits ever measured for an exoplanet of its size - with a year lasting about 19 hours. The color scale on the planet represents the temperature across its atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Z. Levay, STScI.

Astronomers Create Weather Map of Exoplanet WASP-43b

Oct 11, 2014 by News Staff

An international group of scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has produced a global weather map of a hot-Jupiter exoplanet called WASP-43b,...

A rare and mighty pulsar (magenta) can be seen at the center of Messier 82 in this image. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SAO / NOAO.

Messier 82 Galaxy Harbors Mysterious, Extremely Bright Pulsar

Oct 9, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers, led Dr Matteo Bachetti of the University of Toulouse in France, has detected what they say is the most powerful pulsar...

Comparison of HAT-P-11b with Neptune. Image credit: Aldaron / CC BY-SA 3.0

Water Vapor Detected on Neptune-sized Exoplanet HAT-P-11b

Sep 24, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the United States, Chile and Europe has detected water vapor in the atmosphere of a Neptune-sized extrasolar planet known as...

Some of 22,000 merging galaxies identified within the GAMA survey. Image credit: Simon Driver / Aaron Robotham / ICRAR.

Massive Galaxies Grow by Snacking on Smaller Neighbors

Sep 20, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers conducting a broad survey of galaxies called Galaxy and Mass Assembly (GAMA) have found that the Universe’s most massive galaxies gain weight...

This Hubble Space telescope image shows the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 60 in the center, and the ultra-compact dwarf galaxy M60-UCD1 below it and to the right, and also enlarged as an inset; Messier 60’s gravity also is pulling galaxy NGC4647, upper right, and the two eventually will collide. Image credit: NASA / Space Telescope Science Institute / European Space Agency.

Astronomers Discover Supermassive Black Hole in Dwarf Galaxy M60-UCD1

Sep 18, 2014 by News Staff

A multinational group of astronomers led by Dr Anil Seth of the University of Utah has discovered a supermassive black hole at the center of an ultra-compact...

A density map of part of the Milky Way disk; the axes show galactic latitude and longitude, coordinates that relate to the position of the centre of the Galaxy; the mapped data are the counts of stars detected in i, the longer wavelength broad band of the survey, down to a faint limit of 19th magnitude; although this is just a small section of the full map, it portrays in exquisite detail the complex patterns of obscuration due to interstellar dust. Image credit: Hywel Farnhill / University of Hertfordshire.

New Catalogue of Visible Milky Way Contains 219 Million Stars

Sep 16, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands have assembled a catalogue of the visible part of the northern...

This is an artist's impression of SN 1993J. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Hubble Helps Astronomers Solve Mystery of Supernova SN 1993J

Sep 11, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Wide-Field Camera 3 aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have finally discovered a companion...

This artist's conception shows W0855, the coldest known brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Penn State University.

Water Ice Clouds Found in Atmosphere of Brown Dwarf Just 7.2 Light-Years Away

Sep 11, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Dr Jacqueline Faherty from Carnegie Institution of Washington and American Museum of Natural History have discovered evidence of water...

An artist's conception of the young massive star HD100546 and its surrounding disk. A planet forming in the disk has cleared the disk within 13 astronomical units of the star, a distance comparable to that of Saturn from our Sun. As gas and dust flows from the circumstellar disk to the planet, this material surrounds the planet as a circumplanetary disk (inset). These rotating disks are believed to be the birthplaces of planetary moons, such as the Galilean moons that orbit Jupiter. Image credit: P. Marenfeld / NOAO / AURA / NSF.

Astronomers Spot Birth of Giant Exoplanet around HD 100546

Sep 9, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers headed by Dr Sean Brittain of Clemson University have discovered evidence of a huge extrasolar planet forming around the young star HD 100546. An...

A slice of the Laniakea Supercluster in the supergalactic equatorial plane. Our Milky Way Galaxy is located at the black dot at the origin of the supergalactic coordinates system. The colors represent density within this slice, with red for high densities and blue for voids - areas with relatively little matter; individual galaxies are shown as white dots; velocity flow streams within the region gravitationally dominated by Laniakea are shown in white, while dark blue flow lines are away from the Laniakea local basin of attraction; the orange contour encloses the outer limits of these streams, a diameter of about 522 million light-years. Image credit: DP / CEA / Saclay, France.

Laniakea: Milky Way Galaxy Found to Belong to Newly Identified Galactic Supercluster

Sep 4, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers headed by Dr R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii has determined that our Milky Way Galaxy lives in a newly...

H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836, an object seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck-II telescope on Hawaii with the help of a gravitational lens. In this image one can see the foreground galaxy that is doing the lensing, which resembles how our Milky Way Galaxy would appear if seen edge-on; but around this galaxy there is an almost complete ring - the smeared out image of a star-forming galaxy merger far beyond. Image credit: ESO / NASA / ESA / W. M. Keck Observatory.

Astronomers Spot Two Colliding Galaxies in Distant Universe

Aug 27, 2014 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers, led by Dr Hugo Messias of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile and the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal, has...

This is an optical image of the low-mass, second-generation star SDSS J0018-0939 (center), obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Image credit: NAOJ / SDSS.

Astronomers Discover Signature of First-Generation Very-Massive Star

Aug 22, 2014 by News Staff

Using the High Dispersion Spectrograph mounted on the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, astronomers led by Dr Wako Aoki of the National Astronomical...

This image shows two star formation regions in the southern Milky Way: the first of these, on the left, is dominated by the star cluster NGC 3603; the second object, on the right, is NGC 3576. Image credit: ESO / G. Beccari.

Astronomers Capture Spectacular NGC 3576, NGC 3603

Aug 20, 2014 by News Staff

A group of astronomers using the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory has captured an image of two intriguing and beautiful star formation...

This composite image shows the nearby galaxy Messier 82. The intermediate-mass black hole M82 X-1 is the brightest object in the inset. Image credit: full-field - X-ray: NASA / CXC / JHU / D. Strickland; optical: NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA/ Hubble Heritage Team; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech /Univ. of AZ / C. Engelbracht; inset - NASA / CXC / Tsinghua University / H. Feng et al.

M82 X-1: Astronomers Zoom in on Rare Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Messier 82

Aug 18, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Dr Dheeraj Pasham at the University of Maryland have determined the mass of a black hole known as M82 X-1, which is located in the nearby...