Scientists Update HITRAN to Help Model Exoplanet Atmospheres
All atoms and molecules emit distinctive spectral lines across the spectrum, the details of which depend on the internal structures of the species (for example,…
Astronomy
Astronomers Pit Einstein Against Newton to Determine the Mass of KOI-3278
A team of astronomers led by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have updated and confirmed self-lensing binary star KOI-3278’s companion to be a white dwarf…
Sequence of Events Which Gave Rise to the Milky Way Revealed
The universe 13,000 million years ago was very different from the universe we know today. It is understood that stars were forming at a very…
Hubble Captures Sharply Angled Perspective of Spiral Galaxy NGC 3169
Every now and then, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope glimpses a common object — say, a spiral galaxy — in an interesting or unusual way….
ALMA Captures Amazing Image of Microquasar SS 433
This is SS 433, a microquasar first discovered forty years ago and located about 18,000 light-years away in the constellation of Aquila (The Eagle). This…
Gaia Makes First Direct Measurement of the Galactic Bar in the Milky Way
The first direct measurement of the bar-shaped collection of stars at the centre of our Milky Way galaxy has been made by combining data from…
Astronomers Reveal New Measurement for Universe Expansion
Astronomers have made a new measurement of how fast the universe is expanding, using an entirely different kind of star than previous endeavors. The revised…
Hubble Image of the Week – A Beautiful Whorl
Galaxies come in many shapes and sizes. One of the key galaxy types we see in the Universe is the spiral galaxy, as demonstrated in…
Hubble Telescope Discovers Mysterious Black Hole Disc
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have observed an unexpected thin disc of material encircling a supermassive black hole at the heart of the…
ALMA Reveals Moon-Forming Disk Around Distant Planet
Using Earth’s most powerful array of radio telescopes, astronomers have made the first observations of a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust like the one…
Astronomers Discover A Black Hole Disk That Shouldn’t Exist
As if black holes weren’t mysterious enough, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have found an unexpected thin disk of material furiously whirling around a…
Astronomers Discover Supermassive Black Holes on a Collision Course
Astronomers have spotted a distant pair of titanic black holes headed for a collision. Each black hole’s mass is more than 800 million times that…
ALMA Provides First Bird’s-Eye View of Massive Star Growth
Astronomers obtained the first detailed face-on view of a gaseous disk feeding the growth of a massive baby star. They found that it shares many…
Hubble Image of the Week – Galactic Cherry Blossom
The galaxy NGC 1156 resembles a delicate cherry blossom tree flowering in springtime in this Hubble Picture of the Week. The many bright “blooms” within…
Hubble and Spitzer Identify the Atmosphere of Mid-Size Planet
Two NASA space telescopes have teamed up to identify, for the first time, the detailed chemical “fingerprint” of a planet between the sizes of Earth…
Successful Orion Test Brings NASA Closer to Mars Mission
NASA successfully demonstrated Tuesday the Orion spacecraft’s launch abort system can outrun a speeding rocket and pull astronauts to safety during an emergency during launch….
Hubble Views Galaxy’s Biggest Ongoing Stellar Fireworks Show
Imagine slow-motion fireworks that started exploding 170 years ago and are still continuing. This type of firework is not launched into Earth’s atmosphere, but rather…
Chandra Views Spinning Black Holes Across Cosmic Sea
A new study has revealed how fast some distant, rapidly growing supermassive black holes are spinning. The material around of one these black holes is…