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This pair of visible-light and near-infrared Hubble photos shows N6946-BH1 before and after it vanished out of sight by imploding to form a black hole. The left image shows the star as it looked in 2007. In 2009, the star shot up in brightness to become over 1 million times more luminous than our Sun for several months. But then it seemed to vanish, as seen in the right panel image from 2015. A small amount of IR light has been detected from where the star used to be. This radiation probably comes from debris falling onto a black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. Kochanek, Ohio State University.

Red Supergiant Fails to Explode as Supernova, Collapses into Black Hole

May 26, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have watched as N6946-BH1, a red supergiant with a mass of 25 solar masses in the spiral galaxy NGC 6946, was likely reborn as a black hole. This...

An artist’s impression of a quasar and neighboring merging galaxy. The galaxies observed by Decarli et al are so distant that no detailed images are possible at present. This combination of images of nearby counterparts gives an impression of how they might look in more detail. Image credit: Max Planck Institute for Astronomy / NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Astronomers Discover New Kind of Galaxy: Rapidly Star-Forming Galaxies from Early Universe

May 25, 2017 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have discovered a new kind of galaxy which, although very old — formed...

Artist’s conception of the newly-discovered object orbiting the main, central supermassive black hole of the galaxy Cygnus A. Image credit: Bill Saxton / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Spot Bright New Object near Cygnus A Galaxy’s Central Black Hole

May 24, 2017 by News Staff

Pointing the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at the well-known and often-studied galaxy Cygnus A for the first time in more than 20 years, astronomers...

TRAPPIST-1h is shown as covered in ice, similar to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Image credit: NASA.

Kepler’s K2 Mission Spies Details of Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1h

May 23, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have used data gathered by K2, the second mission of NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope, to confirm details of TRAPPIST-1h, the outermost of seven...

Very intense radiation from EZ Canis Majoris pushes Sh2-308 out further and further, blowing it bigger and bigger. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Spots Bubble-Like Cloud of Gas around EZ Canis Majoris

May 22, 2017 by News Staff

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows part of a bubble nebula, called Sh2-308, surrounding the massive star EZ Canis Majoris. Very...

This Hubble image shows a moon orbiting the dwarf planet 2007 OR10. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. Kiss, Konkoly Observatory / J. Stansberry, STScI.

Astronomers Discover Moon Orbiting Dwarf Planet 2007 OR10

May 22, 2017 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s Kepler and Herschel space observatories, astronomers have discovered a new moon in our Solar System,...

Composite image of the Fomalhaut star system. The ALMA data, shown in orange, reveal the distant and eccentric debris disk in never-before-seen detail. The central dot is the unresolved emission from the star, which is about twice the mass of our Sun. Optical data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is in blue; the dark region is a coronagraphic mask, which filtered out the otherwise overwhelming light of the central star. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / M. MacGregor / NASA / ESA / Hubble / P. Kalas / B. Saxton / AUI / NSF.

ALMA Provides First Complete Image of Fomalhaut’s Debris Disk

May 18, 2017 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have made the first complete millimeter-wavelength image of the ring of dusty...

Light and color would look different on a planet orbiting a tiny red star, like this artist’s impression of Proxima b. The Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone is the nearest exoplanet to our Sun. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Proxima b: Researchers Take First Steps to Explore Climate of Nearby Exoplanet

May 17, 2017 by News Staff

A team of astrophysicists and meteorology experts from the University of Exeter and the UK’s Met Office have embarked on the first, tentative steps to...

This is an artist’s rendering of the styrofoam-density exoplanet KELT-11b. Image credit: Walter Robinson, Lehigh University.

KELT-11b: ‘Puffy’ Gas Giant Found 320 Light-Years Away

May 16, 2017 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers led by Lehigh University researcher Joshua Pepper has discovered a ‘styrofoam’-density exoplanet orbiting the bright...

This composite image of the Crab Nebula was assembled by combining data from five telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum: the VLA (radio) in red; Spitzer (infrared) in yellow; Hubble (visible) in green; XMM-Newton (ultraviolet) in blue; and Chandra (X-ray) in purple. Image credit: NASA / ESA / NRAO / AUI / NSF / G. Dubner, University of Buenos Aires.

Stunning New View of Crab Nebula

May 12, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers created this composite image of the Crab Nebula — a 10-light-year-wide remnant of a supernova explosion — by combining data from...

The atmosphere of the Neptune-mass exoplanet HAT-P-26b is unexpectedly primitive, composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. By combining observations from Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, Wakeford et al determined that, unlike Neptune and Uranus, the exoplanet has relatively low metallicity. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

HAT-P-26b: Unexpectedly Primitive Atmosphere Discovered around Neptune-Mass Exoplanet

May 12, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered that HAT-P-26b — a ‘warm Neptune’ orbiting a dwarf star approximately 437 light-years from Earth — has an atmosphere...

This global view of Io was obtained by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft on 19 September 1997 at a range of more than 500,000 km (310,000 miles). In this image, deposits of sulfur dioxide frost appear in white and grey hues while yellowish and brownish hues are probably due to other sulfurous materials. Bright red materials and ‘black’ spots with low brightness mark areas of recent volcanic activity and are usually associated with high temperatures and surface changes. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Astronomers Create Detailed Map of Loki Patera, Most Active Volcanic Site on Jupiter’s Moon Io

May 11, 2017 by News Staff

Taking advantage of a rare orbital alignment between Jupiter’s moons Io and Europa, a research team led by scientists at the University of California...

This artist’s impression displays TRAPPIST-1 and its planets reflected in a surface. Image credit: NASA / R. Hurt / T. Pyle.

TRAPPIST-1 System’s Planetary Harmonies Save It from Destruction

May 11, 2017 by News Staff

The recently discovered TRAPPIST-1 planetary system has a unique configuration, according to new research from the University of Toronto, Canada. This...

An artist’s conception of SIMP0136, a planetary-like member of the 200-million-year-old Carina-Near group. Image credit: NASA / JPL / Jonathan Gagne.

One of Nearest Brown Dwarfs is Actually Free-Floating Giant Planet, Astronomers Say

May 10, 2017 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by the Carnegie Institution has discovered that what scientists had previously thought was one of the closest brown dwarfs to...

This Hubble image shows the unusual object LEDA 18516. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Image Captures Collision of Two Spiral Galaxies

May 8, 2017 by News Staff

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures an ongoing cosmic collision between two massive galaxies. This Hubble image shows the...

With the final observation of the distant galaxy cluster Abell 370 -- approximately 6 billion light-years away -- the Frontier Fields program came to an end. Abell 370 is one of the very first galaxy clusters in which astronomers observed the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, the warping of spacetime by the cluster’s gravitational field that distorts the light from galaxies lying far behind it. This manifests as arcs and streaks in the picture, which are the stretched images of background galaxies. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / HST Frontier Fields.

Abell 370: Hubble Team Releases New ‘Frontier Fields’ Image

May 4, 2017 by News Staff

This new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is one of the best ever views of the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370. The image (hi-res version)...

This VISTA image of the Small Magellanic Cloud shows millions of stars. Image credit: ESO / VISTA / VMC.

VISTA Telescope Takes Biggest Infrared Image Ever of Small Magellanic Cloud

May 3, 2017 by News Staff

This enormous image (zoomable version), captured with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope (VISTA), is the largest infrared image (43,223 x 38,236...

Artist’s illustration of the Epsilon Eridani system. In the right foreground, the Jupiter-mass planet Epsilon Eridani b is shown orbiting its star at the outside edge of an asteroid belt. In the background can be seen another narrow asteroid or comet belt plus an outermost belt similar in size to our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt. The similarity of the structure of the Epsilon Eridani system to our Solar System is remarkable, although Epsilon Eridani is much younger than our Sun. Image credit: NASA / SOFIA / Lynette Cook.

Epsilon Eridani System is Remarkably Similar to Our Own

May 3, 2017 by News Staff

New observations from the joint German-U.S. Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), the largest airborne observatory in the world, indicate...

This X-ray image of the hot gas in the Perseus Cluster was made from 16 days of Chandra observations. An oval highlights the location of an enormous wave found to be rolling through the gas. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Stephen Walker et al.

Astronomers Find Enormous Wave of Hot Gas Rolling through Nearby Galaxy Cluster

May 2, 2017 by News Staff

A wave spanning 200,000 light-years (about twice the size of our Milky Way Galaxy) is rolling through the Perseus Cluster, according to observations from...