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A density map of part of the Milky Way disk; the axes show galactic latitude and longitude, coordinates that relate to the position of the centre of the Galaxy; the mapped data are the counts of stars detected in i, the longer wavelength broad band of the survey, down to a faint limit of 19th magnitude; although this is just a small section of the full map, it portrays in exquisite detail the complex patterns of obscuration due to interstellar dust. Image credit: Hywel Farnhill / University of Hertfordshire.

New Catalogue of Visible Milky Way Contains 219 Million Stars

Sep 16, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from the Isaac Newton Telescope on La Palma in the Canary Islands have assembled a catalogue of the visible part of the northern...

This is an artist's impression of SN 1993J. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Hubble Helps Astronomers Solve Mystery of Supernova SN 1993J

Sep 11, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph and Wide-Field Camera 3 aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have finally discovered a companion...

This artist's conception shows W0855, the coldest known brown dwarf. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Penn State University.

Water Ice Clouds Found in Atmosphere of Brown Dwarf Just 7.2 Light-Years Away

Sep 11, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Dr Jacqueline Faherty from Carnegie Institution of Washington and American Museum of Natural History have discovered evidence of water...

An artist's conception of the young massive star HD100546 and its surrounding disk. A planet forming in the disk has cleared the disk within 13 astronomical units of the star, a distance comparable to that of Saturn from our Sun. As gas and dust flows from the circumstellar disk to the planet, this material surrounds the planet as a circumplanetary disk (inset). These rotating disks are believed to be the birthplaces of planetary moons, such as the Galilean moons that orbit Jupiter. Image credit: P. Marenfeld / NOAO / AURA / NSF.

Astronomers Spot Birth of Giant Exoplanet around HD 100546

Sep 9, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers headed by Dr Sean Brittain of Clemson University have discovered evidence of a huge extrasolar planet forming around the young star HD 100546. An...

A slice of the Laniakea Supercluster in the supergalactic equatorial plane. Our Milky Way Galaxy is located at the black dot at the origin of the supergalactic coordinates system. The colors represent density within this slice, with red for high densities and blue for voids - areas with relatively little matter; individual galaxies are shown as white dots; velocity flow streams within the region gravitationally dominated by Laniakea are shown in white, while dark blue flow lines are away from the Laniakea local basin of attraction; the orange contour encloses the outer limits of these streams, a diameter of about 522 million light-years. Image credit: DP / CEA / Saclay, France.

Laniakea: Milky Way Galaxy Found to Belong to Newly Identified Galactic Supercluster

Sep 4, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers headed by Dr R. Brent Tully of the University of Hawaii has determined that our Milky Way Galaxy lives in a newly...

H-ATLAS J142935.3-002836, an object seen by the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck-II telescope on Hawaii with the help of a gravitational lens. In this image one can see the foreground galaxy that is doing the lensing, which resembles how our Milky Way Galaxy would appear if seen edge-on; but around this galaxy there is an almost complete ring - the smeared out image of a star-forming galaxy merger far beyond. Image credit: ESO / NASA / ESA / W. M. Keck Observatory.

Astronomers Spot Two Colliding Galaxies in Distant Universe

Aug 27, 2014 by News Staff

A multinational team of astronomers, led by Dr Hugo Messias of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile and the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal, has...

This is an optical image of the low-mass, second-generation star SDSS J0018-0939 (center), obtained by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Image credit: NAOJ / SDSS.

Astronomers Discover Signature of First-Generation Very-Massive Star

Aug 22, 2014 by News Staff

Using the High Dispersion Spectrograph mounted on the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea, astronomers led by Dr Wako Aoki of the National Astronomical...

This image shows two star formation regions in the southern Milky Way: the first of these, on the left, is dominated by the star cluster NGC 3603; the second object, on the right, is NGC 3576. Image credit: ESO / G. Beccari.

Astronomers Capture Spectacular NGC 3576, NGC 3603

Aug 20, 2014 by News Staff

A group of astronomers using the Wide Field Imager at ESO’s La Silla Observatory has captured an image of two intriguing and beautiful star formation...

This composite image shows the nearby galaxy Messier 82. The intermediate-mass black hole M82 X-1 is the brightest object in the inset. Image credit: full-field - X-ray: NASA / CXC / JHU / D. Strickland; optical: NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA/ Hubble Heritage Team; IR: NASA / JPL-Caltech /Univ. of AZ / C. Engelbracht; inset - NASA / CXC / Tsinghua University / H. Feng et al.

M82 X-1: Astronomers Zoom in on Rare Intermediate-Mass Black Hole in Messier 82

Aug 18, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers led by Dr Dheeraj Pasham at the University of Maryland have determined the mass of a black hole known as M82 X-1, which is located in the nearby...

Maps of the measured DIB absorption in respect to the area they cover in our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Janez Kos / Nick Risinger / RAVE team.

Astronomers Create Maps of Milky Way’s Interstellar Material

Aug 16, 2014 by News Staff

A group of astronomers from Europe, Australia and the United States led by Dr Janez Kos of the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia has produced pseudo-3D...

The 2.6-million-light-year-long stream of atomic hydrogen gas, shown in green, stretches from the large galaxy at the bottom left to the group of galaxies at the top; a third nearby galaxy to the right also has a shorter stream of gas attached to it; the three insets show expanded views of the different galaxies and the green circle indicates the Arecibo telescope beam. Image credit: Rhys Taylor / Arecibo Galaxy Environment Survey / the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Collaboration, www.sdss.org.

Astronomers Discover 2.6-Million-Light-Year-Long Stream of Hydrogen

Aug 8, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers using the William E. Gordon Telescope at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico has discovered a 2.6-million-light-year-long...

This image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 1309; the X-shaped feature at the top of the image of the galaxy marks the location of the supernova SN 2012Z; the inset panel from 2013 shows the supernova; archival Hubble data from 2005 and 2006 show the progenitor system for the supernova. Image credit: NASA / ESA / C. McCully and S. Jha, Rutgers University / R. Foley, University of Illinois / Z. Levay, STScI / Hubble Heritage Team / A. Riess, JHU / STScI.

Hubble Finds Progenitor to Rare Type Iax Supernova SN 2012Z

Aug 7, 2014 by News Staff

Archival photographs from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have been used to uncover the progenitor to the supernova SN 2012Z – the binary star system...

Left: the image of Io taken in the near-infrared with adaptive optics at the Gemini North telescope on August 29, 2013. Image credit: Katherine de Kleer / UC Berkeley / Gemini Observatory / AURA. Right: NASA's Galileo spacecraft acquired this image of Io in July 1999. Image credit: NASA / JPL / University of Arizona.

Scientists Capture Three Massive Volcanic Eruptions on Io

Aug 5, 2014 by News Staff

An international team of scientists, using the W. M. Keck Observatory’s 10-meter Keck II telescope, the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea and the...

This image shows the galaxy cluster IRC 0218. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Kim-Vy Tran, Texas A&M University / Kenneth Wong, Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Hubble Discovers Most Distant Gravitational Lens Yet

Aug 1, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers using the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Camera onboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered the most distant...

This is an illustration of a hot Jupiter orbiting a Sun-like star.

Astronomers Discover Three Surprisingly Dry Jupiter-Like Exoplanets

Jul 25, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers headed by Dr Nikku Madhusudhan of the Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy has found that the abundance of water vapor...

This artist's conception shows Kepler-421b. Image credit: David A. Aguilar / CfA.

Kepler-421b: Astronomers Discover Exoplanet with Longest Known Year

Jul 22, 2014 by News Staff

A year on the newly discovered Uranus-sized exoplanet Kepler-421b lasts for 704.2 days, making it the longest orbital period exoplanet yet found. Its parent...

This artist's impression shows the structure of our Milky Way Galaxy, including the location of the spiral arms and other components such as the bulge. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / ESO / R. Hurt.

Scientists Discover Two Most Distant Stars Ever Detected in Milky Way Galaxy

Jul 18, 2014 by News Staff

A team of astronomers using the Red Channel spectrograph at the MMT Observatory on Mt. Hopkins in Arizona has discovered the most distant Milky Way stars...

This image shows the nearby spiral galaxy Messier 101 and the seven newly discovered dwarf galaxies. Image credit: Allison Merritt et al.

Dragonfly Telephoto Array Discovers Seven Dwarf Galaxies around Messier 101

Jul 11, 2014 by News Staff

Astronomers using a new telescope called the Dragonfly Telephoto Array have discovered seven new dwarf galaxies the field of a nearby spiral galaxy known...

This artist's impression shows dust forming in the environment around a supernova explosion. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Astronomers Zero in on Stardust around Supernova SN 2010jl

Jul 9, 2014 by News Staff

Scientists led by Dr Christa Gall from Aarhus University, Denmark, have discovered that supernovas – the cosmic factories of gas and dust – produce...