Astronomy News

Dark Energy May Have Varied over Cosmic Time, New Study Suggests

This illustration helps explain how astronomers tracked the effects of dark energy to about one billion years after the Big Bang by determining the distances to quasars, rapidly growing black holes that shine extremely brightly. Two of the most distant quasars studied are shown in Chandra images in the insets. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss; X-rays – NASA / CXC / University of Florence / G. Risaliti & E. Lusso.
Jan 31, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton spacecraft have found evidence that an invisible force called dark energy, widely thought to be constant, may be getting stronger with time. If confirmed, this result could force astronomers to re-examine their fundamental understanding of the history and structure of the Universe. This illustration helps explain how astronomers tracked the effects of dark energy...

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Pan-STARRS Astronomers Issue Largest Astronomical Data Release Ever

Jan 30, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii has released data from the...

An artist’s impression of the newly-discovered Kuiper Belt object. Image credit: Ko Arimatsu.

Astronomers Discover Kilometer-Sized Object in Kuiper Belt

Jan 29, 2019 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Japan has discovered a 2.6-km (1.6 mile) wide object in the Kuiper Belt, a distant region of icy debris that extends far beyond...

This striking image combines data gathered with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. It shows just a part of the spectacular tail emerging from the spiral galaxy D100. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Cramer et al.

Hubble Finds Spiral Galaxy with Ram Pressure-Stripped Tail in Coma Cluster

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

A long streamer of hydrogen gas is being stripped from a spiral galaxy called D100 as it plunges toward the center of the Coma cluster (also known as Abell...

A 30,000 light-year region from the Renaissance Simulation centered on a cluster of young galaxies that generate radiation (white) and metals (green) while heating the surrounding gas. A dark matter halo just outside this heated region forms three supermassive stars (inset) each over 1,000 times the mass of our Sun that will quickly collapse into massive black holes and eventually supermassive black holes over billions of years. Image credit: Advanced Visualization Lab, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Early Universe’s Massive Black Holes Born in Rapidly-Growing Dark Matter Halos: Study

Jan 28, 2019 by News Staff

When the Universe was less than 1 billion years old, some of its stars turned into supermassive black holes. A key mystery in astronomy has been: why are...

An artist’s impression of an extrasolar submoon. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Can Moons Have Submoons?

Jan 25, 2019 by News Staff

Saturn’s moons Titan and Iapetus, Jupiter’s moon Callisto, Earth’s Moon, and the recently-discovered extrasolar moon Kepler 1625b-i are capable of...

Beyond Neptune, there is a large disk of small objects, called the Kuiper Belt and beyond that is the Oort Cloud, home of the comets. This artwork shows a section of Kuiper Belt, crowded with the icy cores of potential comets. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Massive Disk of Trans-Neptunian Objects Casts Doubt on Planet Nine

Jan 23, 2019 by News Staff

In 2016, Caltech astronomers showed that six distant solar system objects (2007 TG422, 2013 RF98, 2004 VN112, 2012 VP113, 2012 GB174 and a minor planet...

ESO 577-24 was imaged by the FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph 2 (FORS2) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope. The FORS2 instrument captured the bright, central star, Abell 36, as well as the surrounding planetary nebula. The red and blue portions of this image correspond to optical emission at red and blue wavelengths, respectively. An object much closer to home is also visible in this image -- an asteroid wandering across the field of view has left a faint track below and to the left of the central star. And in the far distance behind the nebula a glittering host of background galaxies can be seen. Image credit: ESO.

Ghostly Planetary Nebula Glows in New VLT Image

Jan 22, 2019 by News Staff

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has released an absolutely beautiful photo taken by its Very Large Telescope (VLT) of a planetary nebula called...

This Hubble image shows a giant cluster of galaxies called SDSS J0928+2031. The image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in the infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. It is based on data obtained through four filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. The image was made as part of the Sloan Giant Arcs Survey Program. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Gladders et al / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Spots Massive Lensing Galaxy Cluster

Jan 21, 2019 by News Staff

SDSS J0928+2031, a huge group of galaxies in the constellation of Leo, is so massive that its strong gravity bends light like a giant lens. This Hubble...

Rocky Super-Earth Found Orbiting Solar-Type Star

Jan 21, 2019 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers has found a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet orbiting HD 285181, a 3.7-billion-year-old solar-type star approximately 294...

Messier 61 is aligned face-on towards Earth, thus presenting us with a breathtaking view of its structure. The gas and dust of the intricate spiral arms are studded with billions of stars. Image credit: ESO.

VLT Captures Incredible Image of Messier 61

Jan 17, 2019 by News Staff

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile has captured an amazing new photo of the spiral galaxy Messier 61. Messier 61 is...

An artist’s impression of a view of the HD 98800BaBb binary star system and the surrounding disk. Image credit: Mark Garlick, University of Warwick.

ALMA Discovers Binary Star System with Polar Protoplanetary Disk

Jan 15, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) have spotted the first example of a binary system that has flipped its protoplanetary...

The Steward 2.3-m Bok Telescope image of M31N 2008-12a and its surrounding super-remnant. Image credit: Darnley et al, doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0825-4.

Astronomers Find Nova Super-Remnant in Andromeda Galaxy

Jan 14, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found that M31N 2008-12a, a frequently erupting ‘nova’ located in the Andromeda Galaxy, is surrounded by a...

This image of the elliptical galaxy Messier 89 is a composite of separate exposures acquired by Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Faber et al.

Hubble Spots ‘Perfectly Spherical’ Elliptical Galaxy: Messier 89

Jan 14, 2019 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the massive galaxy Messier 89, which is found in the constellation of Virgo. This image of the...

An artist’s impression of crystallization in a white dwarf star. Image credit: Mark Garlick / University of Warwick.

White Dwarfs Observed Turning into Crystals

Jan 11, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESA’s galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia have discovered the first direct evidence that white dwarfs form crystal cores of metallic oxygen...

Massive Exoplanet Found within Binary Star System

Jan 11, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have discovered a planet roughly twice the size of Earth orbiting a star in the low-mass binary...

Less than a billion years after the Big Bang, a supermassive black hole began devouring anything within its gravitational grasp; this triggered a firestorm of star formation around the black hole; a galaxy was being born; a blowtorch of energy blazed across the Universe. Now, 12.8 billion years later, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured the beacon from this event. But the telescope needed help to spot it: the gravitational warping of space by a comparatively nearby intervening galaxy greatly amplified and distorted the quasar’s light, making it the brightest such object seen in the early Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Find Brightest Quasar of Early Universe

Jan 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have spotted the brightest quasar ever seen in the early Universe. Less than a billion years after...

The globally distributed dishes of the European VLBI Network are linked with each other and the 305-m William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Together they have localized FRB121102’s exact position within its host galaxy. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar, www.artsource.nl.

Second Repeating Fast Radio Burst Detected

Jan 10, 2019 by News Staff

Astrophysicists from the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) Collaboration have spotted 13 new fast radio bursts (FRB) — powerful...

TESS discovered three small exoplanets around nearby stars. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / MIT News.

TESS Discovers Its Third Small Exoplanet: Sub-Neptune HD 21749b

Jan 9, 2019 by News Staff

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has discovered its third small exoplanet, named HD 21749b. The discovery will be reported in a paper...

Star formation in dwarf galaxies can slowly ‘heat up’ the dark matter, pushing it outwards. The left image shows the hydrogen gas density of a simulated dwarf galaxy, viewed from above. The right image shows the same for a real dwarf galaxy, IC 1613. In the simulation, repeated gas inflow and outflow causes the gravitational field strength at the center of the dwarf to fluctuate. The dark matter responds to this by migrating out from the center of the galaxy, an effect known as ‘dark matter heating.’ Image credit: Read et al, doi: 10.1093/mnras/sty3404.

Astrophysicists Find First Observational Evidence for ‘Dark Matter Heating’

Jan 8, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astrophysicists from the University of Surrey, Carnegie Mellon University and ETH Zürich has found evidence that dark matter...

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