A View of Clouds of Cosmic Dust in the Region of Orion
This new image from the APEX telescope in Chile shows the region around the reflection nebula NGC 1999 in visible light, with the APEX observations…
European Southern Observatory News
New ESO Image Shows Lupus 3
A new image from the European Southern Observatory shows Lupus 3, a cloud that contains huge amounts of cool cosmic dust and a place where…
New VISTA Image Shows Globular Cluster 47 Tucanae
Captured using ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, this new image shows 47 Tucanae, also known as NGC 104, a bright and massive…
ALMA Views a Key Stage in the Birth of Giant Planets
Using the ALMA telescope, scientists have made the first direct observations of the streams of gas that flow across a gap in the disc of…
Hubble Data Reveals That Globular Clusters Age at Different Rates
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, scientists discovered that globular clusters of the same age can have dramatically different distributions of blue straggler stars…
VLT Survey Telescope Image of the Carina Nebula
ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope captured this new image of the Carina Nebula, a huge stellar nursery lying about 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation…
Astronomers Identify a New Kind of Galaxy, “Green Bean Galaxies”
Located in the constellation of Aquarius, roughly 3.7 billion years from Earth, galaxy J2240 has been identified as part of a new class of galaxies…
New Finding Challenges Theories of How Rocky, Earth-Scale Planets Form
While viewing the young brown dwarf ISO-Oph 102, an international team of astronomers pinpointed carbon monoxide gas around the brown dwarf and found that the…
Scientists Discover the Most Powerful Quasar Outflow Ever
Scientists have discovered a quasar that is at least five times more powerful than any that has been observed to date. Data reveals that a…
Herschel Finds a Clue to How Planetary Systems Form and Evolve
In two new studies, scientists use data from the Herschel Space Observatory to find a correlation between the presence of massive debris discs and planetary…
Study Shows Dwarf Planet Makemake Lacks Atmosphere
Scientists detail the dwarf planet Makemake in a new study, measuring its density for the first time and finding out that it is not surrounded…
Astronomers Discover a Probable Free-Floating Planet, CFBDSIR2149
Using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and ESO’s Very Large Telescope, astronomers discovered CFBDSIR2149, a large free-floating object near the AB Doradus Moving Group. Astronomers using ESO’s…
Planetary Nebula Fleming 1 Likely Has Two White Dwarfs Circling Each Other at Its Center
Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, a team of astronomers discovered that Fleming 1 is likely to have two white dwarfs at its center, circling each…
Globular Cluster NGC 6362 Shows Its Blue Stragglers
Located about 25,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ara, globular cluster NGC 6362 contains many blue stragglers, stars that appear younger and bluer…
Image of RCW 120 Nebula Shows Expanding Bubble of Ionized Gas
In this color composite image of the RCW 120 nebula (above), an expanding bubble of ionized gas, about ten light-years across, is revealed. It is…
Largest Catalog Ever of Center of the Milky Way
An international team of astronomers created a catalog of more than 84 million stars in the central parts of the Milky Way using a nine-gigapixel…
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…
Earth-Sized Exoplanet Discovered in Alpha Centauri System
Astronomers have uncovered a low-mass planet orbiting α Centauri B, a member of the stellar system neighboring our Solar System. Although the exoplanet is nearly…