Tag Archive for 'Milky Way'

This image from the eROSITA X-ray telescope shows the energetic Universe. As eROSITA scans the sky, the energy of the collected photons is measured with an accuracy ranging from 2% - 6%. To generate this image, in which the whole sky is projected onto an ellipse (so-called Aitoff projection) with the center of the Milky Way in the middle and the body of our Galaxy running horizontally, photons have been color-coded according to their energy (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1 keV, blue for 1-2.3 keV). The red diffuse glow away from the galactic plane is the emission of the hot gas in the vicinity of the Solar System (the Local Bubble). Along the plane itself, dust and gas absorb the lowest energy X-ray photons, so that only high-energy emitting sources can be seen, and their color appears blue in the image. The hotter gas close to the Galactic center, shown in green and yellow, carries imprinted the history of the most energetic processes in the life of the Milky Way, such as supernova explosions, driving fountains of gas out of the plane, and, possibly, past outburst from the now dormant supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way. Piercing through this turbulent, hot diffuse medium, are hundreds of thousands of X-ray sources, which appear mostly white in the image, and uniformly distributed over the sky. Among them, distant active galactic nuclei are visible as point sources, while clusters of galaxies reveal themselves as extended X-ray nebulosities. In total, about one million X-ray sources have been detected in this image. Image credit: Jeremy Sanders, Hermann Brunner & the eSASS team / Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics / Eugene Churazov & Marat Gilfanov, IKI.

Astronomers Detect Large-Scale X-Ray Bubbles in Milky Way’s Halo

Dec 31, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the eROSITA X-ray telescope onboard the Spektrum-Roentgen-Gamma (SRG) observatory have detected X-ray-emitting bubbles that extend approximately...

The positions and orbits of the newly-discovered high-velocity stars. Image credit: Xiao Kong, China’s National Astronomical Observatories.

Almost Six Hundred New High-Velocity Stars Spotted in Milky Way

Dec 29, 2020 by Sergio Prostak

Using data from the Large Sky Area Multi-object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST) and ESA’s star-mapping satellite Gaia, astronomers have discovered...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth planet TOI-237b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

TESS Discovers Two Small and Warm Exoplanets

Dec 14, 2020 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have discovered two exoplanets transiting inactive red dwarf stars TOI-122...

Ankylosaurus magniventris, a large armored dinosaur species, witnesses the impact of an asteroid, falling on the Yucatan peninsula 66 million years ago. Image credit: Fabio Manucci.

Non-Marine Mass Extinctions Occur with Periodicity of 27.5 Million Years: Study

Dec 11, 2020 by News Staff

Non-marine animals (amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals) have apparently experienced at least 10 distinct episodes of intensified extinctions over...

An artist’s impression of what the Milky Way might look like seen from above. The colored rings show the rough extent of the Heracles galaxy. The yellow dot shows the position of the Sun. Image credit: Danny Horta-Darrington, Liverpool John Moores University / NASA / JPL-Caltech / SDSS.

Astronomers Find ‘Fossil Galaxy’ Hidden in Depths of Milky Way

Dec 8, 2020 by News Staff

A small satellite galaxy, named Heracles, collided with our Milky Way Galaxy about 10 billion years ago and its remnants account for about one third of...

Data from more than 1.8 billion stars have been used to create this map of the entire sky. It shows the total brightness and color of stars observed by ESA’s Gaia satellite and released as part of Gaia’s Early Data Release 3. Brighter regions represent denser concentrations of bright stars, while darker regions correspond to patches of the sky where fewer and fainter stars are observed. The color of the image is obtained by combining the total amount of light with the amount of blue and red light recorded by Gaia in each patch of the sky. The bright horizontal structure that dominates the image is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. It is actually a flattened disk seen edge-on that contains most of the Galaxy’s stars. In the middle of the image, the Galactic center appears bright, and thronged with stars. Darker regions across the Galactic plane correspond to foreground clouds of interstellar gas and dust, which absorb the light of more distant stars. Many of these clouds conceal stellar nurseries where new generations of stars are currently being born. Dotted across the image are also many globular and open clusters, as well as entire galaxies beyond our own. The two bright objects in the lower right of the image are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way. Image credit: ESA / Gaia / DPAC / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO / A. Moitinho.

ESA’s Gaia Mission Releases Data on More Than 1.8 Billion Stars

Dec 3, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium released today the most detailed ever catalogue of Milky Way stars. The new data set,...

As the CMB light (left image) travels through the Universe until observed on Earth (right image), the direction in which the electromagnetic wave oscillates (orange line) is rotated by the angle β; the rotation could be caused by dark matter or dark energy interacting with the CMB light, which changes the patterns of polarization (black lines inside the images); the red and blue regions in the images show hot and cold regions of the CMB, respectively. Image credit: Y. Minami / KEK.

Astrophysicists Find Hints of Beyond-Standard-Model Physics in Universe’s Oldest Light

Nov 30, 2020 by News Staff

Using the polarization data from ESA’s Planck satellite, a mission that have studied the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), the oldest light in the Universe,...

Position and velocity map of the Milky Way Galaxy; arrows show position and velocity data for 224 objects used to model the Galaxy; the solid black lines show the positions of the Galaxy’s spiral arms; the colors indicate groups of objects belonging the same arm. Image credit: NAOJ.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Closer than Astronomers Thought

Nov 27, 2020 by News Staff

The distance between our Solar System and Sagittarius A*, the 4-million-solar-mass black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is approximately 25,800...

On May 24, 2020, four European radio telescopes detected two bright radio bursts from the SGR 1935+2154 magnetar. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar / Artsource.nl.

Fast Radio Burst from Galactic Magnetar SGR 1935+2154 is Repeating

Nov 18, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected two more millisecond-duration radio bursts from SGR 1935+2154, a magnetar located over 14,000 light-years away in the constellation...

An artist’s impression of BDR J1750+3809. Image credit: Danielle Futselaar / ASTRON.

LOFAR Radio Telescope Directly Detects New Brown Dwarf

Nov 9, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope have discovered a new brown dwarf, a substellar object not quite massive enough to fuse...

An artist’s impression of the SGR 1935+2154 magnetar in outburst, showing complex magnetic field structure and beamed emission. Image credit: McGill University Graphic Design Team.

Fast Radio Burst Detected from Magnetar in Milky Way

Nov 9, 2020 by News Staff

Astronomers using the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) and FAST (Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope) telescopes...

This image, taken with the Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco 4-m telescope at the Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory shows the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. The image covers 0.5 by 0.25 degrees on the sky and contains over 180,000 stars, capturing a portion of our galaxy about 220 by 110 light-years across. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / STScI / W. Clarkson, UM-Dearborn / C. Johnson, STScI / M. Rich, UCLA.

Milky Way’s Central Bulge Stars Formed in Single Burst of Formation over 10 Billion Years Ago

Nov 5, 2020 by News Staff

Most stars in the central 1,000 light-years of the Milky Way’s hub formed when it was swollen with infalling gas more than 10 billion years ago, according...

This illustration shows radiation from flares from a red dwarf star like Barnard’s star eroding the atmosphere of an orbiting, rocky planet. Image credit: NASA / CXC / M. Weis.

Barnard’s Star Not So Life-Friendly After All

Nov 2, 2020 by News Staff

Barnard’s star, a 10-billion-year-old red dwarf just 6 light-years from Earth, is still very active and potentially destructive for the atmospheres of...

An artist’s impression of a gravitational microlensing event by a free-floating exoplanet. Image credit: Jan Skowron / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw.

Astronomers Discover Smallest Free-Floating Exoplanet Yet

Oct 30, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers from the OGLE (Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment) project have discovered a Mars- to Earth-mass free-floating, or rogue, planet through...

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist’s conception. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spinning Slowly, Astronomers Say

Oct 28, 2020 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes are characterized by just two numbers: mass and spin, but have a critical influence on the formation and evolution of galaxies....

An artist’s impression of Barnard’s star b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Identify Closest Stars that Could See Earth as Transiting Exoplanet

Oct 23, 2020 by News Staff

Using data gathered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and ESA’s Gaia satellite, a team of U.S. astronomers has identified 1,004...

Stars identified by Donlon II et al. have formed shell structures in the aftermath of a radial merger occurring 3 billion years ago. Image credit: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Astronomers Find Shell Structures in Milky Way Galaxy for First Time

Oct 20, 2020 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, Flatiron Institute, and Queen’s University has spotted two...

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 is Disk-Like and Clumpy, Study Shows

Oct 20, 2020 by News Staff

Using X-ray data from NASA’s HaloSat minisatellite, astronomers have found that our Milky Way Galaxy is surrounded by a clumpy halo of hot gases that...

This image from ALMA shows the M2 spectral-type supergiant star Betelgeuse. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / E. O’Gorman / P. Kervella.

Betelgeuse is Smaller and Closer to Earth than Previously Thought

Oct 16, 2020 by News Staff

Using new observational data from the space-based Solar Mass Ejection Imager and three different modeling techniques, astronomers have found that Betelgeuse,...

The top of WASP-121b’s atmosphere is heated to a blazing 4,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STSci.

Astronomers Detect Vaporized Metals in Atmosphere of Hot Jupiter

Oct 9, 2020 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher) spectrograph at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile have detected gaseous...

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