Astronomy News

Planetary Debris Disk Detected around White Dwarf-Brown Dwarf System

A disc of rocky debris from a disrupted planetesimal surrounds the white dwarf-brown dwarf binary system SDSS 1557. Image credit: Mark Garlick, University College London, University of Warwick and University of Sheffield.
Feb 27, 2017 by News Staff

Evidence of planetary debris surrounding a white dwarf and its substellar companion has been found by a University College London-led international team of astronomers. The discovery is remarkable because the debris appears to be rocky and suggests that terrestrial planets might exist in this exotic system. A disc of rocky debris from a disrupted planetesimal surrounds the white dwarf-brown dwarf binary system SDSS 1557. Image credit: Mark Garlick,...

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This image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the galaxy UGC 12591, located roughly 400 million light-years away in the constellation of Pegasus. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Image of Remarkable Galaxy UGC 12591

Feb 27, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered a stunning snapshot of the strange giant galaxy UGC 12591. This image, taken with the Wide Field Camera...

This VLT image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4981. The bright star visible in the image is a foreground star. Image credit: ESO / Josh Barrington.

VLT Sees Elegant Spiral with Explosive Past

Feb 26, 2017 by News Staff

ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has produced this beautiful image of the spiral galaxy NGC 4981. This VLT image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 4981. The...

This Hubble image shows the remnant of SN 1987A within the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. The image was taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) in January 2017. SN 1987A is located in the center of the image amidst a backdrop of stars. The bright ring around the central region of the exploded star is composed of material ejected by the star about 20,000 years before the actual explosion took place. The supernova is surrounded by gaseous clouds. The clouds’ red color represents the glow of hydrogen gas. The colors of the foreground and background stars were added from observations taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). Image credit: NASA / ESA / R. Kirshner, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation / P. Challis, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Hubble Snaps 30th Anniversary Image of SN 1987A Remnant

Feb 25, 2017 by News Staff

This new image of the remnant of core-collapse Supernova 1987A (SN 1987A) was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope in January 2017. This Hubble...

NGC 5907 X-1 is in the spiral galaxy NGC 5907, which is also known as the Knife Edge Galaxy or Splinter Galaxy. This image comprises X-ray emission data (blue/white) from ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope and NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, and optical data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The inset shows the X-ray pulsation of the spinning neutron star, which has a period of 1.13 sec, as determined by XMM-Newton’s European Photon Imaging Camera. Image credit: ESA / XMM-Newton / NASA / Chandra / SDSS.

XMM-Newton Spots Record-Breaking Pulsar: NGC 5907 X-1

Feb 24, 2017 by News Staff

ESA’s XMM-Newton mission has spotted a pulsar — a rapidly rotating, magnetized neutron star that sweeps regular pulses of radiation in two symmetrical...

NASA’s Fermi telescope has detected a gamma-ray excess (shown in yellow-white) at the center of the Andromeda galaxy that’s similar to a signature Fermi previously detected at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists think the signal could be produced by a variety of processes, including a population of pulsars or even dark matter. Image credit: NASA / DOE / Fermi LAT Collaboration / Bill Schoening / Vanessa Harvey / REU Program / NOAO / AURA / NSF.

Fermi Finds Dark Matter Clues in Andromeda Galaxy

Feb 22, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Fermi telescope has detected a strong gamma-ray signal coming from the core of the Andromeda galaxy (also known as Messier 31) that could indicate...

This artist’s impression shows the view from the surface of one of the exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / Spaceengine.org.

TRAPPIST-1: Nearby Dwarf Star Hosts Seven Earth-Size Exoplanets

Feb 22, 2017 by News Staff

A system of seven exoplanets — three in their star’s habitable zone — has been found by an international team of astronomers. This artist’s...

Image showing a family tree of stars in the solar neighborhood. Image credit: University of Cambridge.

Astronomers Reconstruct History of Solar Neighborhood with Evolutionary Tree

Feb 21, 2017 by News Staff

A University of Cambridge-led team of astronomers, using chemical elements as a proxy for stellar DNA, has assembled an evolutionary family tree of stars...

Astronomers combined data from ALMA’s 7- and 12-m antennas to produce the sharpest possible image of RX J1347.5–1145, the center of which shows up here in the dark ‘hole’ in the ALMA observations. The energy distribution of the CMB photons shifts and appears as a temperature decrease at the wavelength observed by ALMA, hence a dark patch is observed in this image at the location of the cluster. The optical image of RX J1347.5–1145 was taken with Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / T. Kitayama, Toho University / ALMA.

Astronomers Use ALMA to Hunt for Universe’s Oldest Light

Feb 20, 2017 by News Staff

This image shows the first measurements of the so-called Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect (SZE) from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. Astronomers...

Artist’s impression of Planet Nine. Image credit: Tom Ruen / ESO.

Backyard Worlds: Join Search for Planet Nine, Nearby Brown Dwarfs

Feb 17, 2017 by News Staff

A NASA-funded website called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 lets everyone participate in the search for the hypothetical Planet Nine and ‘failed’ stars...

Composite image showing how powerful radio jets from the supermassive black hole at the center of a galaxy in the Phoenix Cluster inflated huge ‘bubbles’ in the hot, ionized gas surrounding the galaxy (the cavities inside the blue region imaged by NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory). Hugging the outside of these bubbles, ALMA discovered an unexpected trove of cold gas, the fuel for star formation (red). The background image is from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / NASA / ESA / Hubble / CXC / MIT / H. Russell et al / M. McDonald et al / B. Saxton.

Powerful Black Hole at Heart of Phoenix Cluster’s Central Galaxy Surprises Astronomers

Feb 15, 2017 by News Staff

A University of Cambridge-led team of astronomers has discovered a surprising connection between a supermassive black hole and the giant galaxy where it...

An artist’s impression of PTFO8-8695 b, which is believed to orbit a star in the constellation Orion every 11 hours. Image credit: A. Passwaters / Rice University.

Astronomers Observe First Exoplanet-Induced Stellar Pulsations

Feb 14, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected strange pulsations in the outer shell of a star called HAT-P-2, and their best guess is that a closely orbiting exoplanet causes...

Artist’s concept of the super-Earth exoplanet GJ 411b. Image credit: Ricardo Ramirez.

Astronomers Reveal Catalog of Nearby Stars, Detect 114 Potential Exoplanets

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers today released the largest-ever compilation of exoplanet-detecting observations made with a technique called radial velocity. They also demonstrated...

This artist’s impression shows AR Scorpii. In this unique double star a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97 minutes with radiation ranging from the ultraviolet to radio. Image credit: M. Garlick / University of Warwick / ESO.

Astronomers Find First Ever White Dwarf Pulsar

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have identified AR Scorpii — a binary stellar system in the constellation Scorpius, 380 light-years from Earth — as the first example...

This Hubble image shows a small portion of the southern sky in the constellation of Tucana. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Scattered Stars, Galaxies in Tucana

Feb 13, 2017 by News Staff

This spectacular image, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, shows part of the sky in the constellation of...

This artist’s impression shows Proxima b orbiting Proxima Centauri, which at only 4.23 light-years is the closest star to our Solar System. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image between the exoplanet and Proxima itself. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Exoplanets in Habitable Zones of Active Red Dwarfs May Face Oxygen Loss

Feb 11, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers led by Vladimir Airapetian, a solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, has developed a model that estimates the oxygen...

This artist’s impression shows a massive, comet-like object falling towards a white dwarf. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Z. Levy, STScI.

Hubble Finds Extrasolar Kuiper Belt Object Ripped Apart by White Dwarf

Feb 9, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have found the first evidence of the remains of a Kuiper Belt object analog scattered around a white dwarf star. The research was published...

This artist’s conception shows an intermediate-mass black hole in the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae. Image credit: B. Kiziltan / T. Karacan.

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found at Center of Star Cluster 47 Tucanae

Feb 9, 2017 by News Staff

47 Tucanae — a huge, ancient globular star cluster about 15,300 light-years away from us — harbors a central black hole about 2,200 times more...

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, their stellar halos and the RR Lyrae bridge: pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the Clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars detected with the data from ESA’s Gaia satellite. Image credit: V. Belokurov / D. Erkal / A. Mellinger.

43,000-Light-Year-Long Stellar Bridge Connects Magellanic Clouds

Feb 8, 2017 by News Staff

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — the largest and most well-known dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s orbit — are connected by a 43,000...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7640, which lies in the constellation Andromeda, about 38.8 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 7640

Feb 6, 2017 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the galaxy NGC 7640. This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 7640, which lies in...

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