Astronomy News

‘Cold Neptunes’ are Common, New Study Says

Neptune-mass planets like the one shown in this artist’s rendering may be the most common in the icy regions of planetary systems; beyond a certain distance from a young star, water and other substances remain frozen, leading to an abundant population of icy objects that can collide and form the cores of new planets; in the foreground, an icy body left over from this period drifts past the planet. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Francis Reddy.
Dec 16, 2016 by News Staff

A new statistical study of exoplanets found by an innovative technique called gravitational microlensing suggests that so-called ‘cold Neptunes’ are likely the most common type of planet to form in the icy outer regions of extrasolar planetary systems. Neptune-mass planets like the one shown in this artist’s rendering may be the most common in the icy regions of planetary systems; beyond a certain distance from a young star, water and other...

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This is an artist impression of the whirlwind being lifted up from the protoplanetary disk around the 100,000-year-old protostar TMC1A. Image credit: Per Bjerkeli / David Lamm / BOID.

Protostars Shoot Out Powerful Whirlwinds

Dec 15, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimetre Array (ALMA) to observe the early stages in the formation of a new star system. For the...

ALMA image of the protoplanetary disk surrounding the young star HD 163296 as seen in dust. New observations suggested that two planets are in orbit around the star. These planets, which are not yet fully formed, revealed themselves by the dual imprint they left in both the dust and the gas portions of the star’s protoplanetary disk. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / AUI / NSF / A. Isella / B. Saxton.

Evidence of Forming Giant Planets Discovered 400 Light-Years from Earth

Dec 13, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found compelling evidence that two infant planets — each about the...

This artist’s impression depicts a Kerr (rapidly spinning) black hole, surrounded by an accretion disc: this thin disc of rotating material consists of the leftovers of a Sun-like star which was ripped apart by the tidal forces of the black hole; shocks in the colliding debris as well as heat generated in accretion led to a burst of light, resembling a supernova explosion. Image credit: ESO / ESA / Hubble / M. Kornmesser.

Kerr Black Hole Eating Sun-like Star Explains Superluminous Explosion ASASSN-15lh

Dec 12, 2016 by News Staff

ASASSN-15lh, an extremely bright explosion in a massive galaxy 3.82 billion light-years away, was thought to be the most luminous supernova ever seen....

In this artist’s illustration, HAT-P-7b closely orbits a star that’s 1,044 light-years from Earth. A companion star (top right) and a candidate planet (foreground) lie in the distance. Image credit: NAOJ.

Scientists Find Evidence of Weather Change on Jupiter-Like Exoplanet HAT-P-7b

Dec 12, 2016 by News Staff

Signs of powerful changing winds have been detected on an extrasolar gaseous planet called HAT-P-7b, which is 40% larger than Jupiter and orbits a star...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy IC 5201, which lies in constellation of Grus, approximately 35.5 million light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Observes Barred Spiral Galaxy IC 5201

Dec 12, 2016 by Natali Anderson

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced an incredibly detailed image of IC 5201, a galaxy in the southern constellation of Grus. This Hubble image...

The distorted galaxy in the simulation (main image) results from a collision and merger between two galaxies. Astronomers think such a merger could be the reason why SPT0346-52 is having such a boom of stellar construction. Once the two galaxies collide, gas near the center of the merged galaxy (shown as the bright region in the center of the simulation) is compressed, producing a burst of new stars. The composite inset shows X-ray data from Chandra (blue), short wavelength infrared data from Hubble (green), infrared light from Spitzer (red) at longer wavelengths, and infrared data from ALMA (magenta) at even longer wavelengths. There is no blue at the center of the image, showing that Chandra did not detect any X-rays that could have signaled the presence of a growing black hole. Image credit: X-ray – NASA / CXC / University of Florida / J. Ma et al; optical – NASA / STScI; infrared – NASA / JPL-Caltech; radio – ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / ALMA; simulation - Simons Foundation / Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation / Flatiron Institute / Caltech / C. Hayward & P. Hopkins.

Astronomers Find Hyper-Starburst Galaxy 12.7 Billion Light-Years Away

Dec 9, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have used CSIRO’s Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to show that a recently-discovered lensed...

Composite view of L2 Puppis in visible light. Image credit: Kervella et al / CNRS / University of Chile / Observatory of Paris / LESIA / ESO / ALMA.

Massive Planet-Like Object Found Circling Nearby Red Giant Star

Dec 8, 2016 by News Staff

A team of astronomers has discovered a giant object — an enormous, Jupiter-like exoplanet or a low-mass brown dwarf — orbiting an ageing red...

This map of dark matter was obtained from data from the KiDS survey, using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope. It reveals an expansive web of dense (light) and empty (dark) regions. This image is one out of five patches of the sky observed by KiDS. The invisible dark matter is seen rendered in pink, covering an area of sky around 420 times the size of the full Moon. This image reconstruction was made by analyzing the light collected from over 3 million galaxies more than 6 billion light-years away. The observed galaxy images were warped by the gravitational pull of dark matter as the light traveled through the Universe. Some small dark regions, with sharp boundaries, appear in this image. They are the locations of bright stars and other nearby objects that get in the way of the observations of more distant galaxies and are hence masked out in the map as no weak-lensing signal can be measured in these areas. Image credit: Kilo-Degree Survey Collaboration / H. Hildebrandt & B. Giblin / ESO.

Deep Space Images Shed More Light on Dark Matter

Dec 7, 2016 by News Staff

An international research team led by Dr. Massimo Viola from the Leiden Observatory and Dr. Hendrik Hildebrandt from the Argelander-Institut für Astronomie...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the highly inclined spiral galaxy NGC 4388. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Spectacular Image of Spiral Galaxy NGC 4388

Dec 5, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a colorful photo of NGC 4388, an active spiral galaxy at the core of the Virgo Cluster. This image from the...

B.H.C. Emonts et al found that the Spiderweb, a massive galaxy in the center of a distant protocluster, is forming from a large reservoir of molecular gas. In this artist’s conception of the protocluster, the protogalaxies are shown in white and pink, and the blue indicates the location of the carbon monoxide gas. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Astronomers Witness Birth of Massive Cluster Galaxy

Dec 3, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Massive galaxies may grow from cold molecular gas that condenses as stars rather than forming in violent mergers, according to an international team of...

Star of Bethlehem May Not Have Been Star After All, Says Astrophysicist

Dec 2, 2016 by News Staff

Grant Mathews, professor of theoretical astrophysics and cosmology in the University of Notre Dame’s College of Science, believes the event that led...

This Hubble image shows the elliptical galaxy NGC 4696. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Fabian.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes Hidden Depths of NGC 4696

Dec 1, 2016 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the most detailed image yet of NGC 4696, an unusual looking galaxy with a bright core wrapped in a system...

An artist’s impression of a near-Earth asteroid. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

2015 TC25: Astronomers Find Smallest Known Near-Earth Asteroid

Dec 1, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers led by University of Arizona scientist Dr. Vishnu Reddy has obtained observations of the smallest near-Earth asteroid...

This artist’s view shows how the light coming from the surface of a strongly magnetic neutron star (left) becomes linearly polarized as it travels through the vacuum of space close to the star on its way to the observer on Earth (right). The polarization of the observed light in the extremely strong magnetic field suggests that the empty space around the neutron star is subject to a quantum effect known as vacuum birefringence. The magnetic and electric field directions of the light rays are shown by the red and blue lines. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Astronomers Report First Observational Evidence for Vacuum Birefringence

Nov 30, 2016 by News Staff

By studying the light emitted from the very dense and strongly magnetic neutron star RX J1856.5-3754, a team of astronomers has found the strongest observational...

Planets form around a young star in this artist’s concept. Image credit: David A. Hardy, www.astroart.org / NASA.

Solar System’s Birth was Triggered by Nearby Low-Mass Supernova, Researchers Say

Nov 29, 2016 by News Staff

A low-mass core-collapse supernova catalyzed the birth of our Solar System, according to a team of scientists led by University of Minnesota researcher. Planets...

This artist’s impression shows a super-Earth orbiting a red dwarf star. Image credit: NASA.

K2-3d: Ground-Based Telescope Observes Super-Earth Transiting Bright Star

Nov 28, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of astronomers in Japan has conducted the first ground-based transit observation of K2-3d, a super-Earth within the habitable zone around a bright...

This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the dwarf irregular galaxy IC 3583. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Space Telescope Views Dwarf Galaxy IC 3583

Nov 28, 2016 by News Staff

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the galaxy IC 3583, which lies in the constellation of Virgo, approximately 27.8 million light-years away. This...

The location of the FRB 150807. The yellow circle shows the typical location of an FRB. There are thousands of stars and galaxies in this direction. Because FRB 150807 was very bright the astronomers were able to locate it to a small region near the edge of that circle, shown as the pink banana-shaped region in the inset. In this region there are only six detected galaxies. The position of the most likely host galaxy, VHS7, is highlighted on the plot. Image credit: Vikram Ravi, California Institute of Technology / Ryan Shannon, ICRAR-Curtin & CSIRO.

Astronomers Report Most Luminous ‘Fast Radio Burst’ Ever Observed

Nov 21, 2016 by News Staff

A research team led by California Institute of Technology astronomer Vikram Ravi and Curtin University research fellow Ryan Shannon has detected the brightest...

Virgo I: New Dwarf Galaxy Discovered in Orbit around Milky Way

Nov 21, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have identified a new ultra-faint dwarf satellite companion of our Milky Way Galaxy. A schematic showing the locations of Virgo I and other...

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