NuSTAR Views Colliding Galaxies, Arp 299
This newly released image from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array shows two colliding galaxies, collectively called Arp 299, located 134 million light-years away. Each of…
Astrophysics News
Astronomers Discover a Possible Distant Black Hole Merger
In a newly published study, a team of astronomers detail an unusual repeating light signal from a distant quasar that they say is most likely…
Astronomers Produce the Most Comprehensive Picture of Eta Carinae to Date
A long-term study has combined data from NASA satellites, ground-based observing campaigns and theoretical modeling to produce the most comprehensive picture of Eta Carinae to…
HARPS-N Spectrograph Reveals the Composition of Terrestrial Planets
Using the High-Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Searcher (HARPS), astronomers show that the recipe for Earth also applies to terrestrial exoplanets orbiting distant stars. How do…
Astronomers Discover Eight New Planets in “Goldilocks” Zone
Using Kepler data, a team of astronomers has discovered eight new planets orbiting their stars at a distance where liquid water can exist on the…
Volunteers Find 1 Million Potential Debris Disks and YSO Disks
A short video details how volunteers using a NASA-sponsored citizen science website made 1 million potential planetary nursery classifications in less than a year. A…
Study Details Why Super-Earths Have Long-Lasting Oceans
A newly published study from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reveals why oceans on super-Earths, once established, can last for billions of years. For life…
COS Observations Show Gas in Fermi Bubbles Moving at 2 Million Miles Per Hour
Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, new research presented at the 225th American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle reveals the velocity and composition of gas in…
Chandra Detects Record-Breaking Outburst from Sagittarius A*
Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, a team of astronomers has detected a record-breaking outburst from supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Astronomers…
20 Years of Science Discoveries From NASA’s Wind Spacecraft
After 20 years, NASA’s Wind spacecraft is still going strong and helping scientists understand the forces that buffet near-Earth space. The end of 2014 marks…
A Deficit of Ultra-Luminous X-Ray Sources in Starburst Galaxies
Astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have completed a study of active star-forming galaxies, revealing a large deficit in the number of ULXs detected….
Kepler Detects A Super-Earth Transiting the Bright K-Dwarf HIP 116454
Despite a malfunction that ended its primary mission in May 2013, NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is still alive and working and has detected a newfound planet,…
Chandra Measures Massive Galaxy Cluster in Distant Universe
Using Chandra data, researchers were able to accurately determine the mass and other properties of the most distant massive galaxy cluster discovered to date. Officially…
NASA’s Voyager 1 Experiences Three “Tsunami Waves” in Interstellar Space
New data show that the shock wave that NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft began experiencing in February 2014 is still propagating outward. It is the longest-lasting…
Scientists Use Real Data to Measure the Cosmos
Scientists from the Imperial College London have used data, rather than calculations related to general relativity, to measure large distances in the Universe for the…
Astronomers Detect Pluto-Size Objects Around a Sun-Like Star
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, astronomers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have detected Pluto-size objects around an adolescent Sun-like star. Scientists used the…
Astronomers Detect Magnetic Fields on Solar-Type Stars
A team of astronomers has just completed the most extensive polarization survey of stars to date, detecting magnetic fields on sixty-seven stars with twenty-one of…
Chandra Views Ultraluminous X-Ray Sources
This new Chandra image shows NGC 2207 and IC 2163, which have hosted three supernova explosions in the past 15 years and have produced one…
