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This artist’s illustration shows WASP-121b, an alien world that is losing magnesium and iron gas from its atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J. Olmsted, STScI.

Hubble Detects Massive Cyclones in Atmosphere of WASP-121b

Jan 10, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have detected massive cyclones and other dynamic weather activity swirling on WASP-121b, an ultrahot-Jupiter...

An artist’s impression of the brown dwarf W1935. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / L. Hustak, STScI.

Webb Detects Auroral Signature in Extremely Cold Brown Dwarf

Jan 9, 2024 by News Staff

Using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have detected a brown dwarf with infrared emission from methane, likely due to energy in...

ASKAP radio continuum image of ORC 1 (contours) overlaid onto a DES 3-color composite image. Two galaxies of interest: ‘C’ lies near the center of ORC 1 and ‘S’ coincides with the southern radio peak. Image credit: Norris et al, arXiv: 2006.14805.

Astronomers Solve Mystery of Odd Radio Circles

Jan 9, 2024 by News Staff

Odd radio circles (ORCs), a class of extragalactic astronomical sources discovered in 2019, are in fact shells formed by outflowing galactic winds, possibly...

This composite image shows the Green Monster structure within the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A. Image credit: NASA / CXC / SAO / ESA / STScI / CSA / Milisavljevic et al. / JPL / Caltech / J. Schmidt / K. Arcand.

Astronomers Solve Mystery of ‘Green Monster’ Feature in Cassiopeia A

Jan 8, 2024 by News Staff

New research suggests that the Green Monster — a curious structure first spotted in Webb data in April 2023 — came from that blast wave slamming...

Two spiral galaxies, NGC 6040 and NGC 6039, are merging together at the right side of this Hubble image. NGC 6039 is seen face-on and is circular in shape. NGC 6040 seems to lie in front of the first one. In the lower-left corner, cut off by the frame, the elliptical galaxy NGC 6041 -- a central member of the galaxy cluster that Arp 122 resides in -- appears as light radiating from a point. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Dark Energy Camera, which is mounted on NSF’s Víctor M. Blanco 4-m telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. 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 / J. Dalcanton / Dark Energy Survey / DOE / FNAL / DECam / CTIO / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / L. Shatz.

Beautiful Collision of Two Spiral Galaxies Captured by Hubble: Arp 122

Jan 8, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

This cosmic encounter is known as Arp 122 and is seen here as imaged by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Two spiral galaxies, NGC 6040 and NGC 6039,...

Voyager 2/ISS images of Uranus and Neptune released shortly after the Voyager 2 flybys in 1986 and 1989, respectively, compared with a reprocessing of the individual filter images in this study to determine the best estimate of the true colors of these planets. Image credit: Irwin et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad3761.

Uranus and Neptune Are in Fact Similar Shade of Greenish Blue, New Color-Corrected Images Reveal

Jan 5, 2024 by News Staff

Uranus and Neptune, the so-called ice giants, are the most distant giant planets in our Solar System. Our knowledge of these worlds was revolutionized...

At the center of this complex landscape of brilliant, colorful gas clouds is the supernova remnant 30 Doradus B. Image credit: NASA / CXC / Penn State University / Townsley et al. / STScI / HST / JPL / CalTech / SST / SAO / J. Schmidt / N. Wolk / K. Arcand.

At Least Two Supernova Explosions Created Supernova Remnant 30 Doradus B, Astronomers Say

Jan 5, 2024 by News Staff

30 Doradus B, also cataloged as NGC 2060, is found in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. At the center of this complex...

This Hubble image shows various distant galaxies in the constellation of Cetus: most of the galaxies are very small, but there are a few larger galaxies and some stars where detail can be made out; in the center there is an elliptical galaxy with a brightly glowing core and a broad disk; a reddish, warped ring of light, thicker at one side, surrounds its core; a small galaxy intersects the ring as a bright dot. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / H. Nayyeri / L. Marchetti / J. Lowenthal.

Hubble Sees Myriads of Distant Galaxies in Cetus

Jan 1, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A new infrared image, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) on board the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows dozens of galaxies — including...

An artist’s impression of the super-Earth planet Ross 508b. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Find New Way to Detect Water Oceans and Alien Life on Rocky Exoplanets

Dec 29, 2023 by News Staff

Planets too close to their star are too hot (such as Venus), those too far, are too cold (like Mars), whereas planets in the habitable zone are just right....

The Fermi team made an all-sky time-lapse movie using 14 years of data acquired by Fermi’s Large Area Telescope. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / DOE / LAT Collaboration.

Fermi Produces Unique Time-Lapse Tour of Gamma-Ray Sky

Dec 28, 2023 by News Staff

A new movie from NASA’s Fermi mission shows the intensity of gamma rays — the highest-energy form of light — with energies above 200 million...

An artist’s impression of the different layers inside a massive neutron star, with the red circle representing a sizable quark-matter core. Image credit: Jyrki Hokkanen, CSC.

Massive Neutron Stars Could Contain Cores Made of Deconfined Quark Matter

Dec 28, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Neutron-star cores contain matter at the highest densities in our Universe. This highly compressed matter may undergo a phase transition where nuclear...

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 and Kepler-1708b are Unlikely to Be Orbited by Large Exomoons, Astronomers Say

Dec 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

There are more than 200 moons in our Solar System, but their relatively small sizes make similarly sized extrasolar moons (exomoons) very hard to detect...

This simulation illustrates a galaxy disk being disturbed, leading to the propagation of a seismic ripple throughout the disk. Image credit: Bland-Hawthorn & Tepper-Garcia, University of Sydney.

ALMA Detects Seismic Ripples in Disk of Ancient Barred Spiral Galaxy

Dec 26, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have observed a disk bending wave in BRI 1335-0417, the oldest known spiral galaxy...

This Hubble image shows four spiral galaxies in the constellation of Horologium: the large, prominent spiral galaxy on the right side of the image is NGC 1356; the two apparently smaller spiral galaxies flanking it are LEDA 467699 (above it) and LEDA 95415 (very close at its left) respectively; and finally, IC 1947 sits along the left side of the image. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey / DOE / FNAL / NOIRLab / NSF / AURA / L. Shatz.

Hubble Spots Four Spiral Galaxies in Horologium

Dec 26, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

A stunning new image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows a collection of galaxies — NGC 1356, LEDA 467699, LEDA 95415 and IC 1947 —...

These NIRCam/Webb images show the multiply-imaged supernova Encore in the distant galaxy MRG-M0138. Two images of Encore (circled) are seen here, but an additional supernova image is expected to become visible around 2035. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Justin Pierel, STScI / Andrew Newman, Carnegie Institution for Science.

Webb Discovers Gravitationally-Lensed Supernova 10 Billion Light-Years from Earth

Dec 22, 2023 by News Staff

A Type Ia supernova named Encore is the second multiply-imaged supernova detected in MRG-M0138, a galaxy around 10 billion light-years away in the constellation...

This Hubble image shows Saturn, its bright white rings, and its three moons: Mimas, Dione, and Enceladus; spoke features on the left and right sides of the rings appear like faint gray smudges against the rings’ bright backdrop, about midway from the planet to the rings’ outer edge. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / STScI / Amy Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Hubble Space Telescope Spots ‘Spokes’ in Saturn’s Rings

Dec 21, 2023 by News Staff

The gas giant Saturn is known for its iconic ring system. However, its B ring can have splotches and streaks of darker or lighter material, known as spokes,...

The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this OmegaCAM/VST image. Image credit: ESO / VPHAS+ Team / CASU.

OmegaCAM Snaps Best Ever Image of Running Chicken Nebula

Dec 21, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astronomers using the OmegaCAM instrument on ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) have captured the 1.5-billion-pixel image of a vast stellar nursery called...

An artist’s impression of FRB 110523 reaching Earth; the colors represent the burst arriving at different radio wavelengths, with long wavelengths (red) arriving seconds after short wavelengths (blue). Image credit: Jingchuan Yu / Beijing Planetarium.

Astronomers Detect Highly Active Repeating Fast Radio Burst

Dec 21, 2023 by News Staff

FRB 20220912A is a repeating fast radio burst that was discovered in 2022 and remained highly active for several months. Using the recently refurbished...

This Hubble image shows UGC 8091, a dwarf irregular galaxy some 7 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. The color image was made from separate exposures taken with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / Yumi Choi, NSF’s NOIRLab / Karoline Gilbert, STScI / Julianne Dalcanton, Center for Computational Astrophysics & Flatiron Institute, University of Washington.

Hubble Takes Close Look at UGC 8091

Dec 20, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

The Hubble team has released a close-up image of the dwarf irregular galaxy UGC 8091, which resembles a sparkling festive snow globe. This Hubble image...