Astronomy News

Milky Way’s Thick Disk is 10 Billion Years Old, Astronomers Say

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.
Dec 6, 2019 by News Staff

Our Milky Way Galaxy consists of two disk-like structures, known as ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ disks. The thick disk contains only about 20% of the Galaxy’s total stars, and, based on its vertical puffiness and composition, is thought to be the older of the pair. Using data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope, astronomers have calculated that the thick disk is about 10 billion years old. From a great distance, our Milky Way Galaxy would look like...

read more...
This composite image shows the surroundings of a supermassive black hole that is triggering star formation across the longest distance ever seen; as hot gas swirls around the black hole, it emits large amounts of X-rays that Chandra detects; the black hole is also the source of radio-wave emission from a jet of high-energy particles -- previously detected by scientists with the VLA -- that stretches about a million light-years. Image credit: NASA / CXC / INAF / R. Gilli et al / NRAO / VLA / STScI.

Supermassive Black Hole Triggers Star Formation in Multiple Galaxies

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

Enormous black holes usually affect their surroundings through the so-called ‘negative feedback’ — in other words, suppressing the formation...

This illustration shows the white dwarf WD J0914 and its Neptune-like exoplanet. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.

Astronomers Find Neptune-Like Exoplanet Orbiting White Dwarf

Dec 5, 2019 by News Staff

A Neptune-like exoplanet orbits an Earth-sized white dwarf star called WD J091405.30+191412.25 (WD J0914 for short) once every 10 days, leaving a comet-like...

This illustration shows a gas giant exoplanet orbiting its parent star. Image credit: NASA / ESA / STScI / L. Calcada.

Study Finds No Clear Correlation between Compositions of Giant Exoplanets and Their Host Stars

Dec 4, 2019 by News Staff

There isn’t a strong correlation between gas giant and host star compositions when it comes to elements heavier than hydrogen and helium, according to...

Hubble captured this view of comet 46P/Wirtanen on December 13, 2018. Image credit: NASA / ESA / D. Bodewits, Auburn University / J.-Y. Li, Planetary Science Institute.

TESS Observes Huge Outburst from Comet 46P/Wirtanen

Dec 4, 2019 by News Staff

On September 26, 2018, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) observed an outburst of gas, ice and dust from the nucleus of comet 46P/Wirtanen....

SDO image of the solar corona in UV light (yellow lines represent the magnetic field on the surface of the Sun). Image credit: NASA / SDO / AIA / LMSAL.

Researchers Crack Mystery of Sun’s Magnetic Waves

Dec 3, 2019 by News Staff

For more than six decades, observations of our Sun have shown that as magnetic waves leave its interior they grow in strength, but until now there has...

This Hubble image shows the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 5468. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Four 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 / W. Li et al / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Space Telescope Observes NGC 5468

Dec 2, 2019 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a spectacularly detailed image of a spiral galaxy called NGC 5468. This Hubble image shows the face-on...

Astronomers Find ‘Impossible’ Stellar Black Hole in Milky Way

Nov 29, 2019 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers has discovered an exceptionally massive black hole of stellar origin with a mass 68 times that of the Sun. An artist’s...

NGC 4631 is seen edge-on, with its disk of stars shown in pink; the filaments, shown in green and blue, extend beyond the disk into the galaxy’s extended halo; green indicates filaments with their magnetic field pointing roughly toward us and blue with the field pointing away; this phenomenon, with the field alternating in direction, has never before been seen in the halo of a galaxy. This VLA image shows a companion galaxy -- a small elliptical galaxy called NGC 4627 -- just above NGC 4631. Image credit: Jayanne English, University of Manitoba / Silvia Carolina Mora-Partiarroyo & Marita Krause of the Max-Planck Institute for Radioastronomy / Maria Patterson & Rene Walterbos, New Mexico State University / Arpad Miskolczi, University of Bochum / NRAO.

Astronomers Spot Huge Magnetic Structures in ‘Whale Galaxy’

Nov 28, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have captured a new image of the edge-on barred spiral galaxy NGC 4631 (also known as ‘Whale...

Astronomers Capture New Image of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Nov 27, 2019 by News Staff

A group of Yale University astronomers has captured a stunning new image of 2I/Borisov, the first known interstellar comet to travel through our Solar...

A series of false-color images capturing the repeated flaking of red clouds from the Great Red Spot in the Spring of 2019. In the earliest image, the flaking is predominant on the east side of the giant red vortex. The flake then breaks off from the Great Red Spot, but a new flake starts to detach in the fifth image. Image credit: Chris Go.

Great Red Spot Isn’t Disappearing, Researchers Say

Nov 26, 2019 by News Staff

Clouds hide the true size and nature of Jupiter’s most distinctive feature, the Great Red Spot, according to a study led by University of California,...

An artist’s impression of planets orbiting a supermassive black hole. Image credit: Kagoshima University.

Planets May Form and Orbit around Supermassive Black Holes

Nov 25, 2019 by Enrico de Lazaro

Protoplanetary disks around stars may not be the only site for planet formation in the Universe, according to a team of theoretical astrophysicists from...

This Hubble image shows the pair of interacting galaxies Arp 293. The image includes infrared observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / K. Larson et al.

Hubble Witnesses Dance of Galaxies: Arp 293

Nov 25, 2019 by Natali Anderson

NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the peculiar pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 293. This Hubble...

This image of the Phoenix Cluster combines X-ray, radio and optical data; side panels show the individual images making up the composite. Image credit: NASA / CXC / MIT / M. McDonald et al / NRAO / AUI / NSF / STScI.

Enormous Black Hole Boosts Star Formation in Phoenix Galaxy Cluster

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes in the center of galaxy clusters usually suppress star formation, but the one in the Phoenix Cluster, a group of about 1,000 galaxies...

NGC 6240 harbors three supermassive black holes at its core: the northern black hole (N) is active and was known before; the zoomed-in new high-spatial resolution image shows that the southern component consists of two supermassive black holes (S1 and S2); the green color indicates the distribution of gas ionized by radiation surrounding the black holes; the red lines show the contours of the starlight from the galaxy and the length of the white bar corresponds to 1,000 light years. Image credit: P. Weilbacher, Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam / NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage / STScI / AURA / Hubble Collaboration / A. Evans, University of Virginia, Charlottesville / NRAO / Stony Brook University.

Astronomers Find Three Supermassive Black Holes in NGC 6240

Nov 22, 2019 by News Staff

NGC 6240, a well-studied nearby galaxy system in the process of merging, contains three supermassive black holes at its core, two of which are active and...

Astronomers Observe Host Galaxy of Extremely Bright and Long Gamma-Ray Burst

Nov 21, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers have investigated the nature of a very bright and long-duration gamma-ray burst, GRB 190114C, by studying its environment. Hubble’s observations...

This image shows TYC 8332-2529-1. Image credit: Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD / DECaPS.

MeerKAT Spots Huge Radio Flare from Binary System

Nov 20, 2019 by News Staff

Astronomers using the MeerKAT telescope at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory have spotted an object which rapidly brightened by more than a...

These are the 27 newly-discovered supernova remnants. The MWA radio images trace the edges of the explosions as they continue their ongoing expansion into interstellar space. Some are huge, larger than the full Moon, and others are small and hard to spot in the complexity of the Milky Way. Image credit: Natasha Hurley-Walker, ICRAR & Curtin / GLEAM Team.

Astronomers Discover 27 New Supernova Remnants in Milky Way

Nov 20, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of astronomers has detected 27 new supernova remnants using a data release of the GaLactic and Extragalactic All-sky MWA survey (GLEAM)...

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...

This composite image shows the Orion A molecular cloud, the nearest known massive star factory, as seen by ESA’s Herschel and Planck space observatories. Located approximately 1,630 light-years away, Orion A is one of the two giant molecular clouds in the Orion molecular cloud complex. The other cloud is Orion B, which lies east of Orion’s Belt. Orion A is packed full of gas -- it contains so much material, in fact, that it would be capable of producing tens of thousands of Sun-mass stars. Different colors visible here indicate the light emitted by interstellar dust grains mixed within the gas, as observed by Herschel at far-infrared and sub-millimeter wavelengths, while the texture of faint gray bands stretching across the frame, based on Planck’s measurements of the direction of the polarized light emitted by the dust, show the orientation of the magnetic field. Image credit: ESA / Herschel / Planck / J.D. Soler, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.

Magnetic Fields Play Role in Structuring Interstellar Medium in and around Star-Forming Clouds: Study

Nov 19, 2019 by News Staff

In a new study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics, Dr. Juan Soler of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy used observations from ESA’s...

© 2011-2025. Sci.News. All Rights Reserved. | Back to top