Tag Archive for 'Gaia satellite'

An artist’s impression of an irregularly-shaped asteroid. Image credit: N. Bartmann, ESA & Webb / ESO / M. Kornmesser / S. Brunier / N. Risinger, skysurvey.org.

Webb Discovers New Asteroid in Solar System’s Main Belt

Feb 7, 2023 by News Staff

The newly-discovered asteroid is less than 230 m (755 feet) across, and orbits within the main asteroid belt, which is located between Mars and Jupiter. An...

This image shows how microlensing was used to measure the mass of the white dwarf LAWD 37. The inset box plots how the dwarf passed in front of a background star in 2019. The wavy blue line traces the dwarf’s apparent motion across the sky as seen from Earth. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Peter McGill, UC Santa Cruz, IoA / Kailash Sahu, STScI / Joseph DePasquale, STScI.

Astronomers Directly Measure Mass of Isolated White Dwarf

Feb 2, 2023 by News Staff

In November 2019, the nearby single, isolated white dwarf LAWD 37 aligned closely with a distant background source and caused a so-called microlensing...

This composite image shows one of the studied clusters, NGC 3293, which is 11 million years old and is located about 8,300 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Carina. The image contains X-rays from Chandra (purple) as well as infrared data from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory (red), longer-wavelength infrared data from NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope (blue and white), and optical data from the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory appearing as red, white and blue. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Penn State University / Getman et al. / ESA / JPL-Caltech / Herschel Space Observatory / IPAC / SSC / Spitzer Space Telescope / MPG / ESO / G. Beccar.

Astronomers Trace Evolution of X-Ray Activity in Young Sun-Like Stars

Dec 27, 2022 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s Gaia satellite have studied a sample of 6,003 stars in 10 different open clusters with...

This artist’s illustration emphasizes the shape of the stellar halo surrounding our Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Melissa Weiss / Harvard & Smithsonian’s Center for Astrophysics.

Milky Way’s Stellar Halo is Oblong and Tilted, Astronomers Say

Nov 21, 2022 by News Staff

Accounting for approximately 1% of the total stellar mass, the stellar halo — the diffuse cloud of stars surrounding the Galactic disk — plays...

An artist’s concept of the Gaia BH1 binary system. Image credit: International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Spaceengine / M. Zamani.

Dormant Stellar-Mass Black Hole Detected 1,600 Light-Years Away

Nov 4, 2022 by News Staff

Gaia BH1 has a mass of 9.62 times the mass of the Sun and is orbited by a bright Sun-like star at about the same distance as our planet orbits the Sun....

This image shows the location of the binary system Gaia DR3 4373465352415301632. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey / Chakrabart et al.

Astronomers Discover Stellar-Mass Black Hole 1,550 Light-Years Away

Oct 20, 2022 by Natali Anderson

The newly-discovered black hole resides in the binary system Gaia DR3 4373465352415301632 with a main-sequence star that is slightly smaller than the Sun....

An artist’s impression of a jet emanating from NGC 4993. Image credit: J.A. Biretta et al / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team / STScI / AURA / Sci-News.com.

Hubble Observes Ultra-Relativistic Jet from Neutron-Star Merger

Oct 14, 2022 by News Staff

GW170817, a titanic collision between two neutron stars detected in August 2017, ejected a structured relativistic jet with a speed greater than 99.97%...

Crocker et al. reveal that the Fermi cocoon is actually due to emission from the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Image credit: O. Macias.

Astronomers Detect Gamma Rays from Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxy

Sep 6, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

The significant gamma-ray emission is coming from a population of millisecond pulsars within the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy, an elliptical loop-shaped...

On August 31, 2012, a long filament of solar material that had been hovering in the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, erupted out into space at 4:36 p.m. EDT. The CME traveled at over 900 miles per second. It did not travel directly toward Earth, but did connect with Earth’s magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, with a glancing blow, causing aurora to appear on the night of September 3. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Sheds New Light on Past and Future of Our Sun

Aug 12, 2022 by News Staff

With an age of 4.57 billion years, the Sun is currently in its comfortable middle age, fusing hydrogen into helium and generally being rather stable; staid...

The interstellar dust map made with Gaia’s data release 3. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Its Third Full Dataset

Jun 14, 2022 by News Staff

Gaia’s data release 3 (DR3) contains new and improved details for almost 2 billion stars in our Milky Way Galaxy as well as for a subset of solar system...

This image of the Carina Nebula reveals the dynamic cloud of interstellar matter and thinly spread gas and dust as never before; the massive stars in the interior of this cosmic bubble emit intense radiation that causes the surrounding gas to glow; by contrast, other regions of the nebula contain dark pillars of dust cloaking newborn stars. Image credit: ESO / J. Emerson / M. Irwin / J. Lewis.

Astronomers Discover 116,027 New Variable Stars

Jun 1, 2022 by News Staff

Using machine learning techniques and data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and several other surveys, astronomers have identified...

An artist’s conception of the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi / CC BY-SA 4.0.

Milky Way Evolved in Few Different Phases, New Research Suggests

Mar 23, 2022 by News Staff

The formation of our Milky Way Galaxy can be split up qualitatively into different assembly phases that resulted in its structurally different stellar...

This image shows the Milky Way Galaxy as seen by ESA’s Gaia spacecraft; the squares represent the location of globular clusters, the triangles the location of satellite galaxies, and the small dots are stellar streams; the dots and squares in purple are objects brought into the Milky Way by the Pontus merging galaxy. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

Gaia Discovers New Fossil Galaxy Hidden in Milky Way’s Halo

Feb 17, 2022 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, astronomers have looked for the remains of ancient dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s halo, which surrounds the...

This DEC image shows Centaurus A, a giant galaxy located some 13 million light-years away in the constellation of Centaurus. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA / M. Soraisam, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign & NOIRLab / T.A. Rector, University of Alaska Anchorage & NOIRLab / M. Zamani, NOIRLab / D. de Martin, NOIRLab.

Nearby Elliptical Galaxy Hosts At Least 1,900 Globular Clusters

Jan 13, 2022 by News Staff

A research team led by University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory astronomers presents a new catalog of 40,502 globular cluster candidates in Centaurus...

C-19 is a grouping of stars in the Milky Way halo that share a common orbital motion around the Galaxy. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / J. da Silva / Spaceengine / M. Zamani.

Astronomers Find Primordial Stellar Stream in Milky Way’s Halo

Jan 6, 2022 by News Staff

Named C-19, the newly-discovered stellar stream is the remnant of an ancient globular cluster and contains stars with extremely low metallicity, with a...

All-sky map of the Milky Way in motion using the Gaia data. Areas with significant motion are shown in black/purple and those with relatively low motion in yellow. A number of large scale filamentary disc structures are evident about the midplane. The map also shows the Magellanic Clouds and their connecting stellar bridge to left, while the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy currently being torn apart can be seen on the right (main body). Image credit: Laporte et al., doi: 10.1093/mnrasl/slab109.

Astronomers Find Fossil Spiral Arms in Milky Way Galaxy

Dec 15, 2021 by News Staff

Using data from ESA’s Gaia satellite and archival spectroscopic surveys, astronomers have mapped the Milky Way disk substructure at distances over 10,000...

An artist’s rendering of a classical nova. Image credit: David Hardy, www.astroart.org.

New Type of Binary Star Observed

Dec 3, 2021 by News Staff

Using new data from ESA’s Gaia star-mapping satellite, the Zwicky Transient Facility, and the Shane Telescope at Lick Observatory, astronomers have observed...

This WISE multicolor image shows NGC 1605, a binary open cluster located 8,480 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus. It was first discovered on December 11, 1786 by the German-born British astronomer William Herschel. Image credit: NASA / WISE / Camargo, arXiv: 2109.14664.

Astronomer Discovers Ancient Binary Open Cluster in Milky Way

Oct 18, 2021 by Sergio Prostak

An open cluster called NGC 1605 is in fact two merging open clusters with evidence of tidal streams, according to new research by Professor Denilso Camargo...

The location of the newly-discovered giant cavity within the Milky Way Galaxy is depicted on the right; a zoomed in view of the cavity (left) shows the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds in blue and red, respectively; though they appear to sit within the cavity and touch, new 3D images of the clouds show they border the cavity and are quite a distance apart. Image credit: Alyssa Goodman / Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Astronomers Find Huge Spherical Cavity in Milky Way Galaxy

Sep 22, 2021 by News Staff

The 490-light-year-wide void is located among the constellations Perseus and Taurus, and was formed by one powerful supernova or a series of such events...

Stretching 3,300 light-years, a collection of young stars and star-forming clouds in the Sagittarius arm of our Milky Way Galaxy is the first major structure identified with such a dramatically different orientation relative to an arm. The background image shows the location of the splinter in the Milky Way. The yellow region in the center of the image is the Galaxy’s bright and crowded center. The Milky Way’s arms spiral around the center, and are full of stars and star-forming clouds of gas and dust. The inset provides a closer view of the structure, as well as its size and distance from the Sun. The nearby spiral arms are also noted. The star shapes indicate a star-forming region that may contain anywhere from dozens to thousands of stars. These stars and star-forming regions are moving through space together, at roughly the same speed and in the same direction. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

3,300-Light-Year-Long Linear Structure Spotted in Milky Way’s Sagittarius Arm

Aug 18, 2021 by News Staff

Astrophysicists have mapped the 3D locations and velocities of star-forming regions in a segment of the Sagittarius arm using data from NASA’s Spitzer...

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