The Triangulum Stream, Remnant of a Star Cluster Being Ingested by the Milky Way
Using the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a team of scientists have discovered a band of stars, named the Triangulum stream, in the southern Galactic sky…
Astrophysics News
Hubble Views Abell 2261, An Elliptical Galaxy With an Unusually Large Core
This new image from Hubble shows Abell 2261, a giant elliptical galaxy located about three billion light-years away that is roughly ten times the diameter…
New Study Revives Doubted Exoplanet Fomalhaut b
A team of astronomers reanalyzed data from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to further examine whether the star Fomalhaut hosts a massive exoplanet, named Fomalhaut b,…
Scientists Search for Quasar’s “Missing” Galaxy
Scientists are exploring the mystery of a distant and very bright quasar that dates to less than one billion years after the big bang. Hubble…
Astronomers Record Detailed Measurements of the Inner Region of a Quasar Nucleus
Using four submillimeter telescopes working simultaneously around the globe, a team of astronomers from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and colleagues made the first detailed measurements…
Distant Quasar Ejects 2 Million Light-Year Long Jet of Cosmic Material
This extended jet of cosmic materials, traveling near light speed, emerged from a distant galaxy. The flow is almost 2 million light-years long, at least…
Centaurus a Hides a Gaseous Spiral at Its Core
Scientists at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan & Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics discovered that elliptical galaxy Centaurus A also shows signs of a spiral…
NASA Discovers a Surprising Trend in Galaxy Evolution
A newly published study shows that nearby disk galaxies unexpectedly reached their current state long after much of the universe’s star formation had ceased. A…
Scientists Discover a New Type of Cosmic Ray
Scientists using the XMM-Newton X-ray astronomy satellite discovered a new signature of a source of low-energy hadronic cosmic rays in the vicinity of the Arches…
Satellites Monitor the Colliding Winds of O-Type Stars
The combined effort of NASA’s Swift satellite, the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton observatory, and several ground-based facilities has allowed scientists to X-ray the colliding stellar…
High Energy Cosmic Rays Could Give Clues to Whether Our Universe Is a Simulation
Quantum chromodynamics is the theory that describes the strong nuclear force, how it binds quarks and gluons into protons and neutrons, and how these form…
Cosmic Spiral Around Red Giant Star R Sculptoris Could Elucidate Stellar Evolution
R Sculptoris, an elderly star, located 1,500 light-years from Earth, has been observed in the final stages of stellar life, slowly shedding the outer layers…
Astronomers Discover Star Orbiting the Black Hole at Center of the Milky Way
A team of scientists discovered a star called S0-102 that orbits the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy in 11.5 years….
Herschel Discovers Water Vapor in a Molecular Cloud on the Verge of Star Formation
The Herschel space observatory has discovered water vapor in a pre-stellar core in the constellation of Taurus known as Lynds 1544. This is the first…
NASA Satellite Discovers a New Black Hole in the Milky Way
NASA’s Swift satellite detected high-energy X-rays a few degrees from the center of our galaxy, toward the constellation Sagittarius. Produced by a rare X-ray nova,…
Scientists Explore How Order Emerges From Chaos in the Cosmos
A newly published paper details how scientists created a model for exploring how electromagnetic fields help organize ionized gas in astrophysical settings, giving scientists a…
Measuring the Expansion of Universe – A Newly Refined Value for the Hubble Constant
Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have greatly improved the cosmic distance ladder used to measure the expansion rate of the universe, as well as…
Asteroid Dust Could Shield Earth From Harmful Solar Radiation
Scottish scientists have proposed to use a giant space-based dust cloud, blasted off an asteroid, to shade the Earth from the sun. Deliberately manipulating the…
