Astronomy News

Mar 29, 2016 by News Staff

New observations of HD 80606b raise questions about origins of so-called hot Jupiters, a class of short-period gas giants with a mass similar to Jupiter’s, says a team of astronomers led by MIT scientist Dr. Julien de Wit. An artist’s concept of a hot Jupiter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI. HD 80606b is a giant extrasolar planet orbiting a star in the constellation of Ursa Major, about 190 light-years away. This planet is about the...

Mar 28, 2016 by News Staff

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a striking new photo of UGC 4459, a type of galaxy known as an irregular dwarf galaxy. This image, taken by...

Mar 24, 2016 by News Staff

Researchers appear to have an explanation for a longstanding question in astrophysics: why did the pace of star formation in the Universe slow down 11...

Mar 23, 2016 by Natali Anderson

According to a study led by University College London researcher William Dunn, the solar wind is causing intense X-ray bursts over Jupiter’s polar regions. Solar...

Mar 23, 2016 by News Staff

Using the OmegaCAM wide-field imager, a large camera mounted on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope, astronomers have captured this vivid image of a small galaxy...

Mar 22, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

An international group of astronomers, led by Prof. Peter Garnavich from the University of Notre Dame, has caught two Type II supernovae at the moment...

Mar 21, 2016 by News Staff

HD 20782b’s orbit closely resembles that of a comet, making it the most eccentric planet ever known. This artist’s rendering shows HD 20782b, the most...

Mar 21, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers have taken a stunning photo of a very massive cluster of galaxies, MACS J0416.1-2403. This image of the galaxy cluster MACS J0416 combines...

Mar 18, 2016 by News Staff

A team of scientists led by Dr. Patrick Ogle from the California Institute of Technology has discovered a new type of galaxy called a super spiral. Images...

Mar 17, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using the H.E.S.S. (High Energy Stereoscopic System) Observatory, a system of four imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes in Namibia, astronomers have...

Mar 17, 2016 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have identified nine extremely massive stars in the young star cluster R136. In this image, the...

Mar 16, 2016 by News Staff

This illustration lays a depiction of the Sun’s magnetic fields over an image obtained by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on March 12. SDO...

Mar 16, 2016 by News Staff

New observations using the High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS) spectrograph – a high-precision instrument on the 3.6-m telescope at...

Mar 15, 2016 by News Staff

Violent red flashes have been observed during the 2015 outburst of the nearby black-hole V404 Cygni. An artist’s impression of a black hole, similar...

Mar 14, 2016 by Natali Anderson

NRAO’s Karl J. Jansky Very Large Array and two of NASA’s space telescopes — Chandra X-ray Observatory and Hubble — have captured a stunning...

Mar 9, 2016 by News Staff

ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at Paranal Observatory, Chile, has taken the sharpest image ever seen of the disc of gas and dust around...

Mar 7, 2016 by News Staff

This parallel field observation from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope reveals a diverse collection of galaxies in the direction of the constellation Sculptor. This...

Mar 3, 2016 by Sergio Prostak

Using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have found a surprisingly bright, infant galaxy 13.4 billion light-years from us, making it the...

Mar 2, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

For the first time, astronomers have detected repeating short bursts of radio waves — so-called fast radio bursts — coming from an extremely...

Mar 2, 2016 by News Staff

RCW 106, a vast cloud of gas and dust, along with its rich and fascinating surroundings, are captured in this incredible photo from ESO’s VLT Survey...