Our Milky Way Galaxy’s Most Recent Major Collision
One of the characteristic features of modern cosmology is its description of how galaxies evolve: via a hierarchical process of colliding and merging with other…
GAIA
Astronomers Discover a “Break” in One of the Milky Way’s Spiral Arms
The newly discovered feature offers insight into the large-scale structure of our galaxy, which is difficult to study from Earth’s position inside it. Scientists have…
“Death Star” Dueling Quasars Looming in the Sky: Hubble Spots Double Quasars in Merging Galaxies
Seeing Dual Quasars Is Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack Inhabitants of our Milky Way galaxy living several billion years from now will have…
Tantalizing Evidence: Is the Nearest Star Cluster to the Sun Being Destroyed?
Data from ESA’s Gaia star mapping satellite have revealed tantalizing evidence that the nearest star cluster to the Sun is being disrupted by the gravitational…
Unexpected Discovery: Hubble Space Telescope Uncovers Concentration of Small Black Holes
Scientists were expecting to find an intermediate-mass black hole at the heart of the globular cluster NGC 6397, but instead they found evidence of a…
Chinese Astronomers Discover 591 High Velocity Stars – 43 of Them Can Even Escape From the Galaxy
A research team, led by astronomers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC), has discovered 591 high velocity stars from the Large…
Acceleration of the Solar System Measured by the Gaia Space Telescope
The Gaia space telescope has measured the acceleration of the Solar System when it orbits the center of our Milky Way galaxy. The Solar System…
See the Motion of 40,000 Stars in the Sky Over the Next 1.6 Million Years
The stars are constantly moving across the sky. Known as proper motion, this motion is imperceptible to the unaided eye but is being measured with…
To the Milky Way’s Anticenter and Beyond: Gaia’s New Detailed Data From More Than 1.8 Billion Stars
The motion of stars in the outskirts of our galaxy hints at significant changes in the history of the Milky Way. This and other equally…
Finding Lost Star Siblings: Star Clusters Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg
“Clusters form big families of stars that can stay together for large parts of their lifetime. Today, we know of roughly a few thousand star…
Gaia Space Observatory Revolutionizes Asteroid Tracking
ESA’s Gaia space observatory is an ambitious mission to construct a three-dimensional map of our galaxy by making high-precision measurements of over one billion stars….
Unlocking Clues to the Origins of the Stars and Planets With Artificial Intelligence
An artificial intelligence (AI) system analyzing data from the Gaia space telescope has identified more than 2,000 large protostars, young stars that are still forming…
The Milky Way Captured Several Tiny Galaxies From Its Neighbor
University of California Riverside-led research shows our galaxy is undergoing a massive merger with its largest satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. Just like the…
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 center of our Milky Way galaxy has been made by combining data from…
Hubble & Gaia Reveal Weight of the Milky Way: 1.5 Trillion Solar Masses
In a striking example of multi-mission astronomy, measurements from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and the ESA Gaia mission have been combined to improve the…
GAIA Reveals For the First Time Crystallization in White Dwarfs
Data captured by ESA’s galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia has revealed for the first time how white dwarfs, the dead remnants of stars like our Sun, turn…
Astronomers Determine the Distance of the Cygnus Loop
The Cygnus Loop (also known as the Veil Nebula) is a supernova remnant, the detritus of the explosive death of a massive star about ten…
The Merger That Led to the Formation of the Milky Way
ESA’s Gaia mission has made a major breakthrough in unravelling the formation history of the Milky Way. Instead of forming alone, our Galaxy merged with…