Slow-growing galaxies offer window to early universe
What makes one rose bush blossom with flowers, while another remains barren? Astronomers ask a similar question of galaxies, wondering how some flourish with star formation and others barely bloom.
View ArticleImage: Galactic wheel of life shines in infrared
It might look like a spoked wheel or even a "Chakram" weapon wielded by warriors like "Xena," from the fictional TV show, but this ringed galaxy is actually a vast place of stellar life. A newly...
View ArticleFifteen years of NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory
This Chandra X-ray Observatory image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster was taken on Oct. 30, 1999, with the Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrometer (ACIS) in an observation that lasted about six hours.
View ArticleUniverse is brighter than we thought according to NASA rocket experiment
A NASA sounding rocket experiment has detected a surprising surplus of infrared light in the dark space between galaxies, a diffuse cosmic glow as bright as all known galaxies combined. The glow is...
View ArticleEffects of accretion disks around newborn stars
Stars are born in dense, cool clouds of molecular gas and dust. When the local density is high enough, the matter can gravitationally collapse to form a new star, a so-called young stellar object...
View ArticleImage: Horsehead nebula viewed in infrared
Sometimes a horse of a different color hardly seems to be a horse at all, as, for example, in this newly released image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The famous Horsehead nebula makes a ghostly...
View ArticleImage: Multicoloured view of supernova remnant
Most celestial events unfold over thousands of years or more, making it impossible to follow their evolution on human timescales. Supernovas are notable exceptions, the powerful stellar explosions that...
View ArticleExtrasolar storms: How's the weather way out there?
Orbiting the Earth 353 miles above the ground, the Hubble Space Telescope silently pivots toward its new target. At the same time, flying 93 million miles away in interplanetary space, NASA's Spitzer...
View ArticleOne of the Milky Way's arms might encircle the entire galaxy
Given that our Solar System sits inside the Milky Way Galaxy, getting a clear picture of what it looks like as a whole can be quite tricky. In fact, it was not until 1852 that astronomer Stephen...
View ArticleTelescope to seek dust where other Earths may lie
The NASA-funded Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer, or LBTI, has completed its first study of dust in the "habitable zone" around a star, opening a new door to finding planets like Earth. Dust is...
View ArticleAn infrared atlas of interacting galaxies
Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have been influenced by an interaction with another galaxy at some time in their past. Interactions between galaxies can trigger an increase in...
View ArticleProgress toward the understanding of the galactic structure
Researchers at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias are studying the evolution and formation of hundreds of close galaxies and have just published new...
View ArticleColours in the Small Magellanic Cloud
Astronomical images often look like works of art. This picture of one of our nearest neighbouring galaxies, the Small Magellanic Cloud, is certainly no exception!
View ArticleNASA satellites catch 'growth spurt' from newborn protostar
Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be...
View ArticleImage: The tumultuous heart of the Large Magellanic Cloud
A scene of jagged fiery peaks, turbulent magma-like clouds and fiercely hot bursts of bright light. Although this may be reminiscent of a raging fire or the heart of a volcano, it actually shows a cold...
View ArticleSuzaku studies supernova 'crime scene,' shows a single white dwarf to blame
Using archival data from the Japan-led Suzaku X-ray satellite, astronomers have determined the pre-explosion mass of a white dwarf star that blew up thousands of years ago. The measurement strongly...
View ArticleDistance measurement of a microlensing event
The distance to celestial objects is key to calculating their intrinsic properties like mass and luminosity. Distance, unfortunately, is also one of the most difficult parameters to measure. The most...
View ArticleSpitzer, OGLE spot planet deep within our galaxy
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has teamed up with a telescope on the ground to find a remote gas planet about 13,000 light-years away, making it one of the most distant planets known.
View ArticleAstronomers find first evidence of changing conditions on a super Earth
Astronomers have detected wildly changing temperatures on a super Earth – the first time any atmospheric variability has been observed on a rocky planet outside the solar system – and believe it could...
View ArticleHow long will our spacecraft survive?
There are many hazards out there, eager to disrupt and dismantle the mighty machines we send out into space. How long can they survive to perform their important missions?
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