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An artist’s impression of innumerable potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets that have yet to be born over the next trillion years in the Universe. Image credit: NASA / ESA / G. Bacon, STScI.

Astronomers Say Most Earth-Like Exoplanets Have Yet to Be Born

Oct 21, 2015 by News Staff

When the Solar System was born about 4.6 billion years ago only 8% of the potentially habitable terrestrial exoplanets that will ever form in the Universe...

This image shows XX Triangulum (center), a red giant star about 1,500 light-years away. Image credit: NASA / IPAC / 2MASS / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

Newly-Released Video Shows Evolution of Starspots on Red Giant

Oct 20, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam, Germany, has created a video that shows the evolution of stellar spots on the...

WASP-47 (center). Image credit: DSS2 / Centre de Données astronomiques de Strasbourg / SIMBAD.

WASP-47: Two New Exoplanets Found Orbiting Hot Jupiter-Hosting Star

Oct 20, 2015 by News Staff

A team of U.S. astronomers has made a surprising discovery using data collected by NASA’s Kepler/K2 mission: a star called WASP-47, a previously known...

This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the spiral galaxy Messier 94. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Captures Stunning Image of Messier 94

Oct 19, 2015 by Natali Anderson

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of Messier 94. This image from Hubble’s Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 shows the...

This image shows part of the Coalsack Nebula, an opaque interstellar dust cloud that obscures the light of the background Milky Way stars; dust grains in the cloud redden the starlight that reaches us by absorbing blue light preferentially. Image credit: ESO.

ESO Astronomers Zoom in on Mysterious Coalsack Nebula

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

This image from the Wide Field Imager, a camera installed on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile, shows part of the huge...

This global map of Jupiter was made during the Hubble OPAL Program. The map was observed on 19 January 2015, from 2:00 UTC to 12:30 UTC. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, GSFC / M. Wong, University of California, Berkeley / G. Orton, JPL-Caltech.

New Global Maps of Jupiter Unveiled

Oct 14, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the University of California, Berkeley,...

Composite image of an edge-on spiral galaxy with a radio halo produced by fast-moving particles in the galaxy’s magnetic field. In this image, the large, grey-blue area is a single image formed by combining the radio halos of 30 different galaxies. At the center is a visible-light image of one of the galaxies, NGC 5775, made using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This visible-light image shows only the inner part of the galaxy’s star-forming region, outer portions of which extend horizontally into the area of the radio halo. Image credit: Jayanne English, University of Manitoba / Judith Irwin & Theresa Wiegert, Queen’s University / CHANG-ES Consortium / NRAO / AUI / NSF / NASA / STScI.

Giant Radio Halos around Spiral Galaxies More Common than Thought

Oct 13, 2015 by News Staff

Using one of the world’s greatest radio observatories, National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Large Array (VLA), a group of astronomers has found...

This Hubble image shows the barred spiral galaxy NGC 4639. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble.

Hubble Snaps Beautiful Image of Barred Spiral Galaxy

Oct 12, 2015 by News Staff

The Hubble team has released a stunning photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of a galaxy known as NGC 4639. This Hubble image shows the barred...

This image of part of an edge-on disk around AU Microscopii reveals wave-like features. Image credit: NASA / ESA / ESO / A. Boccaletti, Paris Observatory.

Strange, Fast-Moving Structures Spotted around Nearby Star AU Microscopii

Oct 8, 2015 by News Staff

Using images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers has discovered unique structures...

This artistic concept shows Kepler-186f. Image credit: NASA Ames / SETI Institute / JPL-CalTech.

Astronomers Create Habitability Index for Transiting Exoplanets

Oct 8, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the University of Washington and NASA Astrobiology Institute’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory has created the ‘Habitability...

This artist’s concept depicts a pulsar called PSR B1257+12 and three exoplanets (discovered by Aleksander Wolszczan in 1992) orbiting around it. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Astronomers Develop New Method for Measuring Mass of Young Pulsars

Oct 6, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from Chile, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, has found a new, highly accurate way to measure the mass of young pulsars. This...

SDO captured this image of an M5.5 class flare - as seen in the bright flash on the lower right limb of the Sun - on October 1. Image credit: NASA / SDO.

NASA’s SDO Spots M-Class Solar Flare

Oct 5, 2015 by News Staff

This new image of a mid-level solar flare was captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) at 8:13 p.m. EDT on October 1, 2015. The image is a...

This composite image shows the planetary nebula Menzel 2 as seen in visible and infrared light by Hubble’s WFPC2 camera. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Serge Meunier.

NASA’s Hubble Observes Planetary Nebula Menzel 2

Oct 5, 2015 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a picture of the planetary nebula Menzel 2, which is found in the southern constellation Norma. This composite...

The artist's concept depicts a super-Earth-size planet. Image credit: NASA Ames / JPL-Caltech.

Terrestrial Exoplanets around Low-Mass Stars Probably Have Protective Magnetospheres

Sep 29, 2015 by News Staff

Earth-mass exoplanets orbiting close to low-mass parent stars likely have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation, says a duo of astronomers...

The Sun emitted a significant solar flare, peaking at 10:58 a.m. EDT on September 28. This SDO image shows a subset of extreme UV light that highlights the extraordinarily hot material in flares and which is typically colorized in red. Image credit: NASA / SDO.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory Sees Mid-Level Solar Flare

Sep 28, 2015 by News Staff

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a mid-level solar flare – as seen in the bright flash in the lower right hand side of the...

This image snapped by Hubble reveals a detailed view of part of the disc of beautiful barred spiral galaxy NGC 613. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / S. Smartt, Queen's University Belfast / Robert Gendler.

Hubble Space Telescope Snaps Breathtaking Picture of NGC 613

Sep 28, 2015 by News Staff

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of NGC 613, a barred spiral galaxy. This image snapped by Hubble reveals a detailed...

Vista Magellanic Clouds Survey view of the galaxy SAGE0536AGN (elliptical object in the center of the frame). Image credit: ESO / VISTA Magellanic Cloud Survey / Royal Astronomical Society.

Monster Black Hole Found 2.3 Billion Light-Years Away

Sep 25, 2015 by News Staff

A team of astronomers from the UK has discovered a black hole of 350 million solar masses at the center of the galaxy SAGE1C J053634.78−722658.5 (SAGE0536AGN...

This Hubble image shows a small section of the Veil Nebula. This section of the outer shell of the famous supernova remnant is in a region known as the Witch’s Broom Nebula (NGC 6960). Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage Team.

Astronomers Get Best View Yet of Veil Nebula

Sep 24, 2015 by News Staff

About 8,000 years ago, Neolithic humans would have witnessed what appeared to be a bright new star blazing in the northern sky. In fact, it was the violent...

The upper two panels of this graphic represent a possible explanation for a recent increase in X-ray flares from Sagittarius A* seen by three X-ray telescopes. As part of a long monitoring campaign, astronomers observed the black hole as a mysterious object called G2 appeared to pass close to the black hole. The timing of G2’s passage could suggest that material from G2 caused the surge in X-ray activity, but it is also possible that this unrelated behavior of Sagittarius A*. The bottom panel is a view of the region around the black hole where red, green, and blue represent low, medium, and high-energy X-rays detected by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Sagittarius A* itself is not visible in this image, but is embedded in the white dot at the end of the arrow. Image credit: NASA / CXC / MPE / G.Ponti et al. / M.Weiss.

X-Ray Observations of Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole Reveal Unusual Activity

Sep 24, 2015 by News Staff

A long monitoring campaign of the Milky Way’s black hole, called Sagittarius A*, has revealed some unusual activity. Typically relatively quiet, the...