Astronomy News

Astronomers Detect Highly Energetic Radiation from Microquasar

SS 433 is a microquasar located in the constellation Aquila, some 15,000 light-years from Earth. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.
Oct 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected gamma rays coming from the outermost regions of an unusual star system within our Milky Way Galaxy. The source is a microquasar — a black hole that gobbles up stuff from a nearby companion star and blasts out two powerful jets of material. The observations suggest that electron acceleration and collisions at the ends of the microquasar’s jets produced the powerful gamma rays. SS 433 is a microquasar located in the...

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This image of 2015 TG387 was taken by the Subaru Telescope on October 13, 2015. Image credit: Dave Tholen / Chad Trujillo / Scott Sheppard.

Astronomers Find New Extreme Dwarf Planet: 2015 TG387

Oct 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet in the Oort Cloud, a spherical ‘cloud’ of frozen objects surrounding the Solar System and extending...

An artist’s impression of the gas giant Kepler 1625b with its large moon, Kepler 1625b-i; the pair has a similar mass and radius ratio to the Earth-Moon system but scaled up by a factor of 11. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Kepler 1625b Has Neptune-Sized Moon, Astronomers Say

Oct 4, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have assembled compelling evidence for the existence of a large...

The positions and reconstructed orbits of 20 high-velocity stars, represented on top of an artistic view of the Milky Way Galaxy. The seven stars shown in red are sprinting away from the Galaxy and could be traveling fast enough to eventually escape its gravity. Surprisingly, the study revealed also thirteen stars, shown in orange, that are racing towards the Milky Way: these could be stars from another galaxy, zooming right through our own. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Marchetti et al.

ESA’s Gaia Satellite Spots High-Velocity Stars Flying between Galaxies

Oct 4, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from ESA’s star mapping Gaia mission to look for hypervelocity stars being kicked out of our Milky Way Galaxy were surprised to...

The exquisite sensitivity of the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the early Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / ESO / Lutz Wisotzki et al.

Early Universe is Glowing with Lyman-alpha Emission

Oct 3, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have discovered an unexpected abundance of Lyman-alpha...

This Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 1898. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Looks at Stunning Globular Cluster NGC 1898

Oct 2, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of NGC 1898, a globular cluster in the constellation Dorado. This Hubble image...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth K2-265b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

K2-265b: Hot, Rocky Super-Earth Found Circling Sun-Like Star

Oct 2, 2018 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have discovered a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star 473 light-years from Earth. An artist’s impression of the super-Earth...

An artist’s impression of the strong magnetic neutron star Swift J0243.6+6124 launching a jet. Image credit: ICRAR / University of Amsterdam.

Highly Magnetic Neutron Star Unexpectedly Shoots Jet of Material

Sep 28, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have discovered a fast-moving jet of material propelled outward from a strongly magnetized neutron...

If the development of life on other inhabited worlds follows a similar timeline to life on Earth, vegetation red edge (VRE) biosignatures are only present for a fraction of a planet’s habitable lifetime once vegetation covers the surface; a VRE biosignature similar to that on the present-day Earth would be difficult to detect without very high-precision instruments; however, the team’s models show that the VRE signature increases with geological time, as well as with increasing vegetation surface fraction and decreasing cloud coverage. Image credit: Jack O’Malley-James / Wendy Kenigsberg / Brand Communications.

Earth’s Natural History May Serve as Guide for Astrobiologists to Spot Inhabited Exoplanets

Sep 27, 2018 by News Staff

By looking at Earth’s natural history, Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute astrobiologists Jack O’Malley-James and Lisa Kaltenegger have found...

This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Oumuamua Traced to Four Possible Home Stars

Sep 27, 2018 by News Staff

In October 2017, a fast moving, cigar-shaped comet of extrasolar origin was discovered close to the Earth with the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawai’i....

This image shows the Seyfert galaxy PG1211+143. Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD / SDSS.

Astronomers Detect Matter Falling into Black Hole

Sep 25, 2018 by News Staff

University of Leicester’s Professor Ken Pounds and co-authors report the detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light. This...

This Hubble image shows a massive group of galaxies bound together by gravity -- a galaxy cluster named SDSS J1050+0017. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Catches Giant Cluster: SDSS J1050+0017

Sep 24, 2018 by News Staff

A new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the diverse collection of galaxies in the huge cluster SDSS J1050+0017. This Hubble image shows...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth HD 39091c. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TESS Discovers Its First Exoplanet: Super-Earth HD 39091c

Sep 24, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite have discovered a super-Earth orbiting an unusually bright, Sun-like star called...

Sun-like stars rotate differentially, with the equator rotating faster than the higher latitudes. The blue arrows in the figure represent rotation speed. Differential rotation is thought to be an essential ingredient for generating magnetic activity and starspots. Image credit: MPI for Solar System Research / MarkGarlick.com.

Sun-Like Stars’ Equators Spin Up To 2.5 Times Faster than Their Poles, Say Astronomers

Sep 21, 2018 by News Staff

Our Sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles. This process is known as differential rotation and is seen in the motion of sunspots. Now, a team...

An artist’s impression of a perturbation in the velocities of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy that was revealed by ESA’s star mapping mission Gaia. Image credit: ESA.

Gaia Sees Effects of Milky Way’s Close Encounter with Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy

Sep 20, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers analyzing data from the second release of ESA’s star mapping mission Gaia have shown that our Milky Way Galaxy is still enduring the effects...

B. Armstrong & K. Bekki suggest that the Large (left) and Small Magellanic Clouds were originally a triplet system containing a companion dwarf galaxy. Image credit: Andrew Lockwood.

Large and Small Magellanic Clouds Once Had Third Companion

Sep 20, 2018 by News Staff

The Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy located about 160,000 light-years away, has a counter-rotating stellar population in its disk. In a new paper...

Neutron stars are the smallest, densest stars in the Universe. True to their name, neutron stars are composed almost entirely of neutrons. Duer et al suggest that some properties of neutron stars may be influenced not only by their multitude of densely packed neutrons, but also by a substantially smaller fraction of protons -- positively charged particles that make up just 5% of a neutron star. This is an illustration of a neutron star. Image credit: Casey Reed, Penn State University.

Nuclear Pasta: Exotic Substance in Neutron Stars’ Crust May Be Universe’s Strongest Material

Sep 19, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of researchers from McGill University, California Institute of Technology and Indiana University has calculated the strength of nuclear...

TESS took this snapshot of the Large Magellanic Cloud (right) and the bright star R Doradus (left) with just a single detector of one of its cameras on August 7. Image credit: NASA / MIT / TESS.

NASA’s Planet-Hunter TESS Captures Its First Science Images

Sep 19, 2018 by News Staff

‘First light’ science images from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) show a wealth of stars and other objects, including stellar...

An artist’s conception of Epsilon Indi, a star system approximately 12 light-years from Earth in the constellation Indus: brown dwarfs Epsilon Indi B and C orbit their common center of mass, which in turn orbits the much more distant primary component -- the Sun-like star Epsilon Indi A. Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa & Sergio Dieterich, Carnegie Institution for Science.

Astronomers Say Star-Brown Dwarf Boundary May Soon Be Clearer

Sep 18, 2018 by News Staff

An international team of scientists led by Carnegie Institution’s Serge Dieterich has demonstrated that brown dwarfs, objects which are unable to sustain...

This image shows RX J0806.4-4123 with a disk of warm dust that produces an infrared signature as detected by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Nahks Tr’Ehnl, Pennsylvania State University.

Hubble Detects Unusual Infrared Emission from Nearby Neutron Star

Sep 18, 2018 by News Staff

An unusual infrared emission from the neutron star RX J0806.4-4123 detected by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope could indicate new features never before...

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