Astronomy News

Crescent Shadow of Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole is Wobbling

The EHT Collaboration unveiled the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy Messier 87 and its shadow. The shadow of a black hole seen here is the closest we can come to an image of the black hole itself, a completely dark object from which light cannot escape. The black hole’s boundary -- the event horizon from which the EHT takes its name -- is around 2.5 times smaller than the shadow it casts and measures just under 25 billion miles (40 billion km) across. Image credit: EHT Collaboration.
Sep 23, 2020 by News Staff

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) delivered the first resolved images of M87*, the supermassive black hole in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87 (M87). Those images were produced using EHT observations performed in April 2017. Additional observations were required to investigate the persistence of the primary image feature and to quantify the image variability. To address this need, astronomers analyzed M87* data collected...

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This ALMA image shows the stellar wind around R Aquilae. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Decin et al.

ALMA Sees Complex Stellar Winds around Red Giant Stars

Sep 23, 2020 by News Staff

Stars with a mass of less than 8 solar masses end their lives as planetary nebulae, structures of ionized gas thrown off by the star and heated by the...

Antolin et al spotted nanojets in the solar corona. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / Scientific Visualization Studio.

IRIS Captures First-Ever Clear Images of Nanojets in Solar Corona

Sep 22, 2020 by News Staff

The solar corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, is shaped and mysteriously heated to millions of degrees by the magnetic field of our star....

An artist’s impression of a stellar-mass black hole surrounded by a disk of gas and plasma gravitationally pulled from a close binary star companion. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weiss.

Astrophysicists Suggest New Way to Detect Stellar-Mass Black Holes

Sep 22, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

An analysis of archival X-ray data from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer has revealed a clear separation between the characteristics of stellar-mass...

Rosetta NavCam image taken on 14 March 2015 at 85.7 km from the center of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; it has been cleaned to remove the more obvious bad pixels and cosmic ray artefacts, and intensities have been scaled. Image credit: ESA / Rosetta / NAVCAM / CC BY-SA IGO 3.0.

Ultraviolet Aurora Spotted on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

Sep 21, 2020 by News Staff

Using data from several instruments aboard ESA’s Rosetta mission, researchers have found evidence of far-ultraviolet aurora on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. This...

An artist’s impression of the Gliese 414 system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find Two Massive Exoplanets in Nearby Binary System

Sep 21, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have discovered two planets orbiting a bright dwarf star in the binary stellar system Gliese 414. An artist’s impression of the Gliese 414...

This Hubble image shows the spiral galaxy NGC 5585. Hotspots of star formation can be seen along the galaxy’s faint spiral arms. These regions shine a brilliant blue, contrasting strikingly against the ever-black background of space. The color image is made up of observations from Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the near-infrared and optical parts of the spectrum. Two filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Tully / Gagandeep Anand.

Hubble Spots Dark Matter-Rich Spiral Galaxy

Sep 21, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have captured a striking new photo of an unusual spiral galaxy called NGC 5585. This Hubble image...

An artist’s impression of a magnetar emitting a burst of radiation. Image credit: Sophia Dagnello, NRAO / AUI / NSF.

Astronomers Precisely Measure Distance to Magnetar

Sep 18, 2020 by News Staff

Using NSF’s Very Long Baseline Array, an international team of astronomers has made the direct geometric measurement of the distance to XTE J1810-197,...

This image of Jupiter was taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope on August 25, 2020, when the planet was 653 million km (406 million miles) from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / M.H. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / OPAL Team.

Hubble Captures Spectacular Photos of Jupiter and Its Icy Moon Europa

Sep 17, 2020 by News Staff

Two new photos, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, show Jupiter with its turbulent atmosphere and giant storms. One of the images also features...

Composite image of Uranus. Image credit: Marcos van Dam / W. M. Keck Observatory.

Herschel Measures Thermal Properties of Uranian Moons

Sep 17, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Using data from the PACS photometer onboard ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory, astronomers have found that thermal properties of the five major moons...

An artist’s impression of the potential Jupiter-size planet WD 1856+534b and its much smaller host star, a dim white dwarf. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Astronomers Find Jupiter-Sized Exoplanet Orbiting White Dwarf

Sep 16, 2020 by News Staff

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and several ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting...

This image shows the protoplanetary disc surrounding the young star HL Tauri. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO.

New Research Sheds Light on Evolution of Interstellar Gas Clouds

Sep 15, 2020 by News Staff

HL Tauri, a young star located 450 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus, is glowing at the center of an system of concentric protoplanetary...

An artist’s impression of the warm-Jupiter exoplanet TOI-1899b and the red dwarf TOI-1899, the lowest-mass star known to host a transiting warm Jupiter. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find Warm Jupiter Orbiting Cool Red Dwarf

Sep 15, 2020 by News Staff

A puffy gas giant slightly larger than Jupiter has been discovered orbiting the early M-type dwarf star TOI-1899, thanks to new data from NASA’s Transiting...

A composite image of Venus as seen by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft. Image credit: Institute of Space and Astronautical Science / Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Astronomers Detect Biosignature Gas Phosphine in Atmosphere of Venus

Sep 14, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have detected phosphine (PH3) gas...

An artist’s impression of the TOI-763 planetary system. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Two Mini-Neptunes Found Orbiting Sun-Like Star

Sep 14, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and the HARPS fiber-fed Echelle spectrograph mounted at the 3.6-m telescope of ESO’s La Silla...

This Hubble image shows NGC 2835, an intermediate spiral galaxy approximately 28.5 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). It is based on data obtained through five filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Lee / PHANGS-HST Team / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Sees Stunning Face-On Spiral Galaxy: NGC 2835

Sep 14, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have produced a spectacularly detailed image of NGC 2835, a face-on intermediate spiral galaxy with...

Carbide Planets May Be Made Of Silica and Diamonds

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

Extrasolar planets hosted by stars with sufficiently high carbon-to-oxygen ratios could be made of diamonds and silica, according to new research by Arizona...

This Hubble image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ 1206. Embedded within the cluster are the distorted images of distant background galaxies, seen as arcs and smeared features. These distortions are caused by the dark matter in the cluster, whose gravity bends and magnifies the light from faraway galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows astronomers to study remote galaxies that would otherwise be too faint to see. Overlaid on the image are small-scale concentrations of dark matter, represented in this artist’s impression in blue. Dark matter is the invisible glue that keeps stars bound together inside a galaxy and makes up the bulk of the matter in the Universe. These blue halos reflect how the galaxy cluster’s dark matter is distributed, revealed by new results from Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / G. Caminha, University of Groningen / M. Meneghetti, Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science of Bologna / P. Natarajan, Yale University / CLASH Team / M. Kornmesser.

New Observations Suggest Missing Ingredient in Current Dark Matter Theories

Sep 11, 2020 by News Staff

The large mass of a galaxy cluster deflects light from background objects, a phenomenon known as gravitational lensing. The large-scale gravitational lens...

SN LSQ14fmg exploded in SDSS J221646.15+152114.2, a star-forming galaxy 100 million light-years away. Image credit: Hsiao et al, doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/abaf4c.

Astronomers Observe Slowest Rising Type Ia Supernova Ever Seen

Sep 10, 2020 by News Staff

The exaggerated properties of a Type Ia supernova dubbed SN LSQ14fmg may help reveal the origin of the ‘super-Chandrasekhar’ group of supernovae it...

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took this image of NGC 1052-DF2 on November 16, 2017. Image credit: NASA / ESA / P. van Dokkum, Yale University.

Self-Interacting Dark Matter Helps Explain Formation of Dark-Matter-Deficient Galaxies

Sep 10, 2020 by News Staff

The so-called self-interacting dark matter theory helps explain why NGC 1052-DF2 and NGC 1052-DF4, a pair of ultra-diffuse galaxies located approximately...

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