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An artist’s concept of the implied distribution of Cepheids (blue) in the Milky Way. With the exception of a small clump in the Galactic center, the central 8,000 light years appear to have very few Cepheids, and hence very few young stars. Image credit: University of Tokyo.

Large Stellar Void Found in Our Milky Way Galaxy

Aug 4, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has found that there is a huge region in the inner part of the Galactic disc that is devoid of stars known as Cepheids. An...

This artist’s concept depicts a super-Earth. Image credit: NASA / Ames / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Create Catalog of Potentially Habitable Earth-Like Exoplanets

Aug 4, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

A team of astronomers from the United States and France has pinpointed which of 4,270 exoplanets discovered by NASA’s Kepler mission are most likely...

This is an artist's impression of an exoplanet. Image credit: Ron Miller.

Life as We Know It is Premature from Cosmic Perspective, Study Suggests

Aug 2, 2016 by News Staff

The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, while Earth formed 4.5 billion years ago. Some cosmologists think this time gap means that life on other planets...

This image shows a small but bright globular cluster called NGC 4833, which lies in the constellation of Musca, about 22,000 light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Snaps Beautiful Image of Distant Globular Cluster

Aug 1, 2016 by Natali Anderson

This image from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is likely the best of the star cluster NGC 4833. This image shows a small but bright globular...

Astronomers Spot Loneliest Young Star

Jul 28, 2016 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers led by Texas Tech University scientist Dr. Christopher Britt has spotted a very young star, called CXOGBS J173643.8-282122...

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 New Type of Binary Star

Jul 27, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers announced today that they have discovered a new type of binary star, in which a rapidly-spinning white dwarf star sweeps powerful beams of...

Our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by an enormous halo of plasma (seen in blue in this artists’ rendition). Image credit: NASA / CXC / M.Weiss / Ohio State / A. Gupta et al.

Milky Way’s Halo Spins in the Same Direction as Galactic Disk, Say Astronomers

Jul 27, 2016 by News Staff

The gaseous halo of our Milky Way Galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at a similar speed as the Galaxy’s disk, which contains stars, planets,...

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 is likely the best of the supernova remnant DEM L316A, which resides in the galaxy Large Magellanic Cloud in the constellation of Dorado. Image credit: NASA/ ESA / Hubble / Y. Chu.

Hubble Zooms in on Supernova Debris in Large Magellanic Cloud

Jul 25, 2016 by News Staff

A new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope provides a detailed look at the remains of a supernova explosion known as DEM L316A. This image...

In the center of this Hubble image is the immense galaxy cluster Abell S1063, located 4 billion light-years away, and surrounded by magnified images of galaxies much farther. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Lotz, STScI.

Hubble Snaps Extraordinary Image of Galaxy Cluster Abell S1063

Jul 21, 2016 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking photo of Abell S1063, a massive cluster of galaxies in the constellation Grus. In the center...

Exoplanets TRAPPIST-1b and c Confirmed to be Rocky

Jul 21, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

TRAPPIST-1b and c, the two innermost planets in the three-planet system TRAPPIST-1, are primarily rocky, unlike gas giants such as Jupiter, according to...

An artist’s rendition of the K2-72 planetary system. Image credit: NASA / JPL.

NASA’s Kepler/K2 Mission Confirms 104 New Extrasolar Planets

Jul 20, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

A team of astronomers has reported a huge haul of new exoplanets discovered and confirmed using data from the first year of the Kepler/K2 mission. Among...

This Hubble image shows the nearby starburst galaxy NGC 3125. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Captures Stunning Image of Nearby Starburst Galaxy

Jul 18, 2016 by News Staff

This image, taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the star-forming galaxy NGC 3125. This...

$This is one slice through the map of the large-scale structure of the Universe from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. Each dot in this picture indicates the position of a galaxy 6 billion years into the past. The image covers about 1/20th of the sky, a slice of the Universe 6 billion light-years wide, 4.5 billion light-years high, and 500 million light-years thick. Color indicates distance from Earth, ranging from yellow on the near side of the slice to purple on the far side. Galaxies are highly clustered, revealing superclusters and voids whose presence is seeded in the first fraction of a second after the Big Bang. This image contains 48,741 galaxies, about 3% of the full survey dataset. Grey patches are small regions without survey data. Image credit: Daniel Eisenstein / SDSS-III Collaboration.$