Tag Archive for 'Milky Way'

This artist’s concept shows the Earth-mass exoplanet OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Frozen Earth-Mass Exoplanet Discovered 12,750 Light-Years Away

Apr 28, 2017 by Natali Anderson

Using a planet-hunting technique called gravitational microlensing, astronomers have detected an Earth-mass planet orbiting an ultracool dwarf 12,750 light-years...

This is an artist impression of a progenitor of Milky Way-like galaxies in the early Universe with a background quasar shining through a ‘super halo’ of hydrogen gas surrounding the galaxy. New ALMA observations of two such galaxies reveal that these vast halos extend well beyond the galaxies’ dusty, star-forming disks. Image credit: A. Angelich / NRAO / AUI / NSF.

ALMA Spots Two Young Milky Way-Like Galaxies in Early Universe

Apr 3, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have observed a pair of massive, dusty galaxies seen when the Universe was only...

An artist’s impression of the brown dwarf SDSS J0104+1535. Image credit: John Pinfield.

Record-Breaking Brown Dwarf Spotted 750 Light-Years Away

Mar 25, 2017 by News Staff

Astronomers have identified a brown dwarf — an object too large to be a planet but too small to be a star — with the ‘purest’ composition...

A present-day near-miss of two spiral galaxies NGC 5426 and NGC 5427, which may be comparable to the early flyby of the Andromeda galaxy past our own Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: ESO.

Discovery Challenges Our Current Understanding of Gravity

Mar 16, 2017 by News Staff

Einstein’s theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after a team of astronomers at the University of St Andrews discovered a 10-million-light-year-wide...

NASA’s Fermi telescope has detected a gamma-ray excess (shown in yellow-white) at the center of the Andromeda galaxy that’s similar to a signature Fermi previously detected at the center of our own Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists think the signal could be produced by a variety of processes, including a population of pulsars or even dark matter. Image credit: NASA / DOE / Fermi LAT Collaboration / Bill Schoening / Vanessa Harvey / REU Program / NOAO / AURA / NSF.

Fermi Finds Dark Matter Clues in Andromeda Galaxy

Feb 22, 2017 by News Staff

NASA’s Fermi telescope has detected a strong gamma-ray signal coming from the core of the Andromeda galaxy (also known as Messier 31) that could indicate...

This artist’s impression shows the view from the surface of one of the exoplanets in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser / Spaceengine.org.

TRAPPIST-1: Nearby Dwarf Star Hosts Seven Earth-Size Exoplanets

Feb 22, 2017 by News Staff

A system of seven exoplanets — three in their star’s habitable zone — has been found by an international team of astronomers. This artist’s...

Image showing a family tree of stars in the solar neighborhood. Image credit: University of Cambridge.

Astronomers Reconstruct History of Solar Neighborhood with Evolutionary Tree

Feb 21, 2017 by News Staff

A University of Cambridge-led team of astronomers, using chemical elements as a proxy for stellar DNA, has assembled an evolutionary family tree of stars...

This artist’s conception shows an intermediate-mass black hole in the center of the globular star cluster 47 Tucanae. Image credit: B. Kiziltan / T. Karacan.

Intermediate-Mass Black Hole Found at Center of Star Cluster 47 Tucanae

Feb 9, 2017 by News Staff

47 Tucanae — a huge, ancient globular star cluster about 15,300 light-years away from us — harbors a central black hole about 2,200 times more...

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, their stellar halos and the RR Lyrae bridge: pale white veils and the narrow bridge between the Clouds represent the distribution of the RR Lyrae stars detected with the data from ESA’s Gaia satellite. Image credit: V. Belokurov / D. Erkal / A. Mellinger.

43,000-Light-Year-Long Stellar Bridge Connects Magellanic Clouds

Feb 8, 2017 by News Staff

The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds — the largest and most well-known dwarf galaxies in the Milky Way’s orbit — are connected by a 43,000...

This SDSS image shows a group of dwarf galaxies that are gravitationally bound together. The detection of seven such groups lends support to the idea that large galaxies formed by the collision and merger of smaller galaxies in the early Universe. Image credit: Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

Researchers Find Seven Isolated Clusters of Dwarf Galaxies

Jan 26, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of researchers led by National Radio Astronomy Observatory and University of Virginia astrophysicist Sabrina Stierwalt has spotted...

This Hubble image shows part of the sky in the constellation of Sagittarius. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Sees Brilliant Stars in Sagittarius

Jan 16, 2017 by News Staff

This colorful view of Milky Way was captured when the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope pointed its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) towards the constellation...

The six most common elements of life on Earth (including more than 97% of the mass of a human body) are carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, sulfur and phosphorus. The colors in the spectra show dips, the size of which reveal the amount of these elements in the atmosphere of a star. The human body on the left uses the same color coding to evoke the important role these elements play in different parts of our bodies, from oxygen in our lungs to phosphorous in our bones (although in reality all elements are found all across the body). In the background is an artist’s impression of the Galaxy, with cyan dots to show the APOGEE measurements of the oxygen abundance in different stars; brighter dots indicate higher oxygen abundance. Image credit: Dana Berry / SkyWorks Digital Inc / SDSS.

Astronomers Map ‘Elements of Life’ in Milky Way Galaxy

Jan 14, 2017 by News Staff

At the 229th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society on Jan. 5, 2017, astronomers from the SDSS/APOGEE (Sloan Digital Sky Survey/Apache Point Observatory...

Stellar streams around the Milky Way Galaxy. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt, SSC & Caltech.

Milky Way’s Most Distant Stars Might Be Ripped from Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy

Jan 12, 2017 by News Staff

Milky Way’s 11 most distant stars are located roughly 300,000 light-years away from us. According to a team of astronomers at Harvard University, five...

This artist’s impression shows a Milky Way-type galaxy, surrounded by a large halo of blue, faint light, made of Lyman-alpha photons. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Photons Struggle to Escape Early Milky Way-Type Galaxies

Jan 11, 2017 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has discovered enormous halos of blue, faint light — made of so-called Lyman-alpha photons — around early...

This Hubble image shows NGC 248, a nebula located in the Small Magellanic Cloud. The data used in this image were taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in September 2015. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / K. Sandstrom, University of California, San Diego / SMIDGE Team.

Hubble Space Telescope Spies NGC 248

Dec 21, 2016 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a spectacular image of NGC 248, a glowing pink nebula in the Small Magellanic Cloud. This Hubble image...

Light and color would look different on a planet orbiting a tiny red star, like this artist’s impression of Proxima b. The Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone is the nearest exoplanet to our Sun. Image credit: ESO / M. Kornmesser.

Are Exoplanets Like Those in ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ Really Out There?

Dec 21, 2016 by NASA

In the ‘Star Wars’ universe, ice, ocean and desert planets burst from the darkness as your ship drops out of light speed. But these worlds might be...

Virgo I: New Dwarf Galaxy Discovered in Orbit around Milky Way

Nov 21, 2016 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers have identified a new ultra-faint dwarf satellite companion of our Milky Way Galaxy. A schematic showing the locations of Virgo I and other...

GLEAM view of Milky Way’s center in radio color: red indicates the lowest frequencies, green indicates the middle frequencies and blue the highest frequencies; each dot is a galaxy, with around 300,000 radio galaxies observed as part of the survey. Image credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker / GLEAM Team.

Murchison Widefield Array Views Universe in Radio Color

Oct 26, 2016 by News Staff

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a low-frequency (80-300 MHz) radio telescope located at the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in Western Australia,...

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the globular cluster NGC 362. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Snaps Beautiful Image of NGC 362

Oct 24, 2016 by Natali Anderson

In this new image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the brilliance of NGC 362, a globular star cluster located approximately 27,000 light-years...

This HI4PI map was produced using data from the 100-m Max-Planck radio telescope in Effelsberg, Germany and the 64-m CSIRO radio telescope in Parkes, Australia. The image colors reflect gas at differing velocities. The plane of the Milky Way Galaxy runs horizontally across the middle of the image. The Magellanic Clouds can be seen at the lower right. Image credit: Benjamin Winkel / HI4PI Collaboration.

Astronomers Create Detailed Hydrogen Map of Milky Way Galaxy

Oct 20, 2016 by News Staff

Using data from the 64-m CSIRO radio telescope in Australia and the 100-m Max-Planck radio telescope in Germany, an international team of astronomers has...

«‹28 293031 32 ›»