Astronomy News

Ultraviolet Superflares May Threaten Exoplanet Habitability near Young Red Dwarfs

An artist’s impression of a habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf. Image credit: Sci-News.com / NASA.
Oct 19, 2018 by News Staff

Stellar superflares from young red dwarfs may make conditions uninhabitable on fledgling planets, according to the new results of the Habitable Zones and M dwarf Activity across Time (HAZMAT) survey. An artist’s impression of a habitable exoplanet orbiting a red dwarf. Image credit: Sci-News.com / NASA. About 70% of the stars in our Milky Way Galaxy are red dwarfs — small, low-surface temperature main-sequence stars with a spectral type of...

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The Hyperion proto-supercluster is the largest and most massive structure yet found at such a remote time and distance -- about 2.3 billion years after the Big Bang. Image credit: ESO / L. Calçada & Olga Cucciati et al.

Astronomers Find Proto-Supercluster of Galaxies in Early Universe

Oct 18, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have spotted a gigantic galaxy proto-supercluster in the early Universe, just 2.3 billion years after the...

This image shows data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple in the inset boxes) in context with an optical image of GRB 150101B from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Image credit: X-rays – NASA / CXC / GSFC / UMC / E. Troja et al; optical and infrared – NASA / STScI.

Astronomers Find Object with Remarkable Similarities to Neutron-Star Merger GW170817

Oct 17, 2018 by News Staff

A distant relative to GW170817, the first source identified to emit gravitational waves and light, has been discovered. Reported in the journal Nature...

An artist’s impression of four gas giants in orbit around CI Tau. Image credit: University of Cambridge.

Astronomers Discover Young Planetary System with Four Gas Giants

Oct 16, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a 2-million-year-old planetary system containing at least four...

Comet C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS). Image credit: Damian Peach, www.damianpeach.com / Jose J. Chambo, www.cometografia.es.

Astronomers Spot Rare Blue Comet: C/2016 R2

Oct 16, 2018 by Sergio Prostak

C/2016 R2 (PanSTARRS), a visitor from the Solar System’s distant Oort Cloud, sports a very complex tail dominated by blue light and is unusually rich...

Gas glows brightly in this computer simulation of supermassive black holes only 40 orbits from merging. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Computer Simulation Sheds Light on Supermassive Black Hole Mergers

Oct 15, 2018 by News Staff

For the first time, a new computer simulation that incorporates the physical effects of Einstein’s general theory of relativity shows that gas in supermassive...

SDSS J0952+3434’s gravity magnifies and distorts a very distant galaxy, which is approximately 11 billion light-years away. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Judy Schmidt, www.geckzilla.com.

Hubble Finds Strong-Lensing Galaxy Cluster

Oct 15, 2018 by News Staff

A stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the effects of gravitational lensing caused by SDSS J0952+3434, a very massive group...

The faint supernova iPTF14gqr appeared in the outskirts of IV Zw 155, a spiral galaxy located 920 million light years away from us. Image credit: SDSS / Caltech / Keck.

Ultra-Stripped Supernova Produces Neutron Star Binary

Oct 12, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers led by Caltech’s Kishalay De has discovered the first recorded ‘ultra-stripped’ supernova — a faint type of supernova...

An artist’s impression of CSIRO’s ASKAP radio telescope detecting a fast radio burst. Image credit: Swinburne University of Technology / OzGrav ARC Centre of Excellence.

Astronomers Discover Twenty New Fast Radio Bursts

Oct 11, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using CSIRO’s Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) at the Murchison Radio-Astronomy Observatory have nearly doubled the known...

CK Vulpeculae resides in the constellation Vulpecula. It is just below the star Albireo, the head of Cygnus, the swan. That location is inside the Summer Triangle of bright stars, which is now high in the south after nightfall. The star is approximately 2,200 light-years from Earth. Image credit: ALMA / ESO / NAOJ / NRAO / Eyres et al.

ALMA Discovers New Type of Stellar Collision

Oct 10, 2018 by News Staff

Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers found evidence that a white dwarf and a brown dwarf collided in a ‘blaze of...

This Hubble image reveals a detailed view of part of the spiral galaxy Messier 95. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Sees Swirling Spiral: Messier 95

Oct 8, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a detailed image of a spectacular part of the spiral galaxy Messier 95. This Hubble image reveals a detailed...

SS 433 is a microquasar located in the constellation Aquila, some 15,000 light-years from Earth. Image credit: L. Calçada / ESO.

Astronomers Detect Highly Energetic Radiation from Microquasar

Oct 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have detected gamma rays coming from the outermost regions of an unusual star system within our Milky Way Galaxy. The source is a microquasar...

This image of 2015 TG387 was taken by the Subaru Telescope on October 13, 2015. Image credit: Dave Tholen / Chad Trujillo / Scott Sheppard.

Astronomers Find New Extreme Dwarf Planet: 2015 TG387

Oct 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet in the Oort Cloud, a spherical ‘cloud’ of frozen objects surrounding the Solar System and extending...

An artist’s impression of the gas giant Kepler 1625b with its large moon, Kepler 1625b-i; the pair has a similar mass and radius ratio to the Earth-Moon system but scaled up by a factor of 11. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Kepler 1625b Has Neptune-Sized Moon, Astronomers Say

Oct 4, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope have assembled compelling evidence for the existence of a large...

The positions and reconstructed orbits of 20 high-velocity stars, represented on top of an artistic view of the Milky Way Galaxy. The seven stars shown in red are sprinting away from the Galaxy and could be traveling fast enough to eventually escape its gravity. Surprisingly, the study revealed also thirteen stars, shown in orange, that are racing towards the Milky Way: these could be stars from another galaxy, zooming right through our own. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Marchetti et al.

ESA’s Gaia Satellite Spots High-Velocity Stars Flying between Galaxies

Oct 4, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using data from ESA’s star mapping Gaia mission to look for hypervelocity stars being kicked out of our Milky Way Galaxy were surprised to...

The exquisite sensitivity of the MUSE spectrograph on ESO’s Very Large Telescope allowed for direct observations of dim clouds of hydrogen glowing with Lyman-alpha emission in the early Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / ESO / Lutz Wisotzki et al.

Early Universe is Glowing with Lyman-alpha Emission

Oct 3, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have discovered an unexpected abundance of Lyman-alpha...

This Hubble image shows the globular cluster NGC 1898. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Looks at Stunning Globular Cluster NGC 1898

Oct 2, 2018 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has delivered an unrivalled snapshot of NGC 1898, a globular cluster in the constellation Dorado. This Hubble image...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth K2-265b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

K2-265b: Hot, Rocky Super-Earth Found Circling Sun-Like Star

Oct 2, 2018 by Natali Anderson

Astronomers have discovered a ‘super-Earth’ exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star 473 light-years from Earth. An artist’s impression of the super-Earth...

An artist’s impression of the strong magnetic neutron star Swift J0243.6+6124 launching a jet. Image credit: ICRAR / University of Amsterdam.

Highly Magnetic Neutron Star Unexpectedly Shoots Jet of Material

Sep 28, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array have discovered a fast-moving jet of material propelled outward from a strongly magnetized neutron...

If the development of life on other inhabited worlds follows a similar timeline to life on Earth, vegetation red edge (VRE) biosignatures are only present for a fraction of a planet’s habitable lifetime once vegetation covers the surface; a VRE biosignature similar to that on the present-day Earth would be difficult to detect without very high-precision instruments; however, the team’s models show that the VRE signature increases with geological time, as well as with increasing vegetation surface fraction and decreasing cloud coverage. Image credit: Jack O’Malley-James / Wendy Kenigsberg / Brand Communications.

Earth’s Natural History May Serve as Guide for Astrobiologists to Spot Inhabited Exoplanets

Sep 27, 2018 by News Staff

By looking at Earth’s natural history, Cornell University’s Carl Sagan Institute astrobiologists Jack O’Malley-James and Lisa Kaltenegger have found...

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