Tag Archive for 'WISE'

Storey-Fisher et al. present the all-sky quasar catalog Quaia, that samples the largest comoving volume of any existing spectroscopic quasar sample. Image credit: Storey-Fisher et al., doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ad1328.

Astronomers Create Largest-Ever Map of Universe’s Quasars

Mar 19, 2024 by News Staff

The new map, dubbed Quaia, includes around 1,295,502 quasars from across the visible Universe and could help astronomers better understand the properties...

Optical mosaics of 42 galaxies from the SGA-2020 sorted by increasing angular diameter from the top-left to the bottom-right. Galaxies are chosen randomly from a uniform (flat) probability distribution in angular diameter. The horizontal white bar in the lower-left corner of each panel represents 1 arcminute and the mosaic cutouts range from 3.2 to 13.4 arcminutes. This figure illustrates the tremendous range of types, sizes, colors and surface brightness profiles, internal structure, and environments of the galaxies in the SGA. Image credit: CTIO / NOIRLab / DOE / NSF / AURA / J. Moustakas.

Astronomers Create Detailed Atlas of Over 380,000 Galaxies

Oct 19, 2023 by News Staff

The Siena Galaxy Atlas (SGA) is a compilation of data from three surveys completed between 2014 and 2017 known as the DESI Legacy Surveys, which were carried...

A visualization of the huge, glowing planetary body produced by the ASASSN-21qj planetary collision. Image credit: Mark Garlick.

Astronomers Detect Afterglow of Collision between Two Ice-Giant Exoplanets

Oct 11, 2023 by Natali Anderson

The collision between two exoplanets of several to tens of Earth masses occurred at a distance of 2-16 AU (astronomical units) from the young solar-like...

Two dwarf-dwarf galaxy mergers in galaxy clusters Abell 133 (left) and Abell 1758S (right) are shown in X-rays from Chandra and optical light from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope. The merger on the left is in a late stage and was given the single name of Mirabilis. The other merger is in the early stages and the two dwarf galaxies are named Elstir (bottom) and Vinteuil (top). Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Alabama / Micic et al. / International Gemini Observatory / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA.

Chandra Spots Two Pairs of Supermassive Black Holes on Collision Courses

Feb 23, 2023 by News Staff

According to observations and cosmological simulations, dwarf galaxies are the most abundant type of galaxies in the early Universe and the galaxy merger...

This image of the Orion Nebula features plenty of dust but no stars. The color image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer and ESA’s Herschel Space Telescope. Image credit: NASA / ESA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Release Breathtaking New View of Orion Nebula

Nov 24, 2022 by Enrico de Lazaro

The famous Orion Nebula can be seen with the naked eye as a fuzzy patch surrounding the star Theta Orionis in the Hunter’s Sword, below Orion’s belt. This...

This mosaic is composed of images covering the entire sky, taken by WISE as part of WISE’s 2012 All-Sky Data Release; by observing the entire sky, WISE can search for faint objects, like distant galaxies, or survey groups of cosmic objects. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / UCLA.

NEOWISE Mission Produces Time-Lapse Movie of Entire Sky

Oct 20, 2022 by News Staff

Using 18 all-sky maps produced by NASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE), astronomers have created what is essentially...

WISE images of the BD+60 1417 system. Image credit: Léopold Gramaize / Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project.

Jupiter-Like Planetary Object Spotted 146 Light-Years Away

Dec 13, 2021 by News Staff

A team of professional astronomers and citizen scientists from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has discovered a planetary-mass object co-moving with...

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...

Four of the newfound quadruply-imaged quasars are shown here; from top left and moving clockwise, the objects are: GraL J1537-3010 or Wolf’s Paw; GraL J0659+1629 or Gemini’s Crossbow; GraL J1651-0417 or Dragon’s Kite; GraL J2038-4008 or Microscope Lens. The fuzzy dot in the middle of the images is the lensing galaxy, the gravity of which is splitting the light from the quasar behind it in such a way to produce four quasar images. Image credit: Gaia Gravitational Lenses group.

Astronomers Discover Twelve New Quadruply-Imaged Quasars

Apr 9, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers from the Gaia Gravitational Lenses group have identified 12 quadruply-imaged gravitationally-lensed quasars using machine-learning methods...

An artist’s impression of one of the team’s discoveries -- the oldest known wide-separation white dwarf plus cold brown dwarf pair. Image credit: NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / P. Marenfeld / William Pendrill.

Astronomers Find 95 New Brown Dwarfs in Solar Neighborhood

Aug 19, 2020 by News Staff

A team of professional astronomers and citizen scientists from the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has spotted 95 new brown dwarfs near the Sun. An artist’s...

An artist’s impression of the brown dwarf W1200-7845 and its disk. Image credit: William Pendrill / NASA.

Astronomers Find Young Brown Dwarf with Circumstellar Disk

Jun 3, 2020 by News Staff

A team of professional astronomers and citizen scientists has spotted a young brown dwarf with a disk that could potentially form exoplanets. Named W1200-7845,...

An artist’s rendering of two brown dwarfs. Image credit: Roberto Molar Candanosa & Sergio Dieterich, Carnegie Institution for Science.

Two Co-Moving Brown Dwarfs Spotted 79 Light-Years Away

Nov 20, 2019 by Sergio Prostak

Professional and amateur astronomers from the NASA-funded ‘Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’ project have spotted a co-moving pair of low-mass brown dwarfs...

Pfeifle et al provide the strongest evidence yet for a system of three supermassive black holes. Image credit: NASA / CXC / George Mason University / R. Pfeifle et al / SDSS / NASA / STScI.

Astronomers Find Triple Supermassive Black Hole

Sep 29, 2019 by News Staff

Using data from several space- and ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a system of three supermassive black holes within SDSS J084905.51+111447.2,...

Ringed White Dwarf Spotted 145 Light-Years Away

Feb 20, 2019 by News Staff

Professional astronomers and volunteers working with the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project have spotted the oldest and coldest known white...

From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like a thin disk of stars that orbits once every few hundred million years around its central region, where hundreds of billions of stars provide the gravitational ‘glue’ to hold it all together. But this pull of gravity is much weaker in the Galaxy’s far outer disk. There, the hydrogen atoms making up most of the Milky Way’s gas disk are no longer confined to a thin plane, instead they give the disk an S-like, or warped, appearance. Image credit: Xiaodian Chen.

New 3D Map of Milky Way Reveals True Shape of Its Stellar Disk

Feb 5, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has used 1,339 classical Cepheid stars — pulsating variable stars each up to 100,000 brighter than our Sun —...

Camargo 1102. Image credit: Denilso Camargo, doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/aacc68.

Astronomer Discovers Five New Globular Clusters

Jul 4, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

Using images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), Dr. Denilso Camargo of the Colégio Militar de Porto Alegre, Brazil, has discovered...

An artistic illustration of a binary black hole. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Discover Five New Double Supermassive Black Holes

Oct 4, 2017 by News Staff

Five new pairs of merging supermassive black holes have been discovered by combining data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Wide-Field Infrared...

Artist’s impression of a T-dwarf. Image credit: R. Hurt / NASA.

First Discovery for ‘Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’ Project: Cold Brown Dwarf

Jun 3, 2017 by Sergio Prostak

Professional and citizen astronomers with the NASA-funded ‘Backyard Worlds: Planet 9’ project have made their first significant discovery: a new brown...

Artist’s impression of Planet Nine. Image credit: Tom Ruen / ESO.

Backyard Worlds: Join Search for Planet Nine, Nearby Brown Dwarfs

Feb 17, 2017 by News Staff

A NASA-funded website called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 lets everyone participate in the search for the hypothetical Planet Nine and ‘failed’ stars...

An artist’s rendition of 2016 WF9 as it passes Jupiter’s orbit inbound toward the Sun. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA’s WISE Spacecraft Spots Two New Near-Earth Objects

Dec 30, 2016 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have discovered two celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood: 2016 WF9...