Astronomy | SpaceRef

Astronomy TOP STORY

Earth Is Faster, Closer To The Black Hole In A New Map Of Our Galaxy

Mars Imaged by Hubble

Earth just got 7 km/s faster and about 2000 light-years closer to the supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

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Astronomy TOP STORIES

Fast-moving Gas Flowing Away From Young Star Caused By Icy Comet Vaporisation

Mars Imaged by Hubble

A unique stage of planetary system evolution has been imaged by astronomers, showing fast-moving carbon monoxide gas flowing away from a star system over 400 light years away, a discovery that provides an opportunity to study how our own solar system developed.

New Hubble Data Explains Missing Dark Matter

In 2018 an international team of researchers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and several other observatories uncovered, for the first time, a galaxy in our cosmic neighborhood that is missing most of its dark matter.

Astronomical Instrument Hunts For Ancient Metal

Researchers created a new astronomical instrument that has successfully aided in estimating the abundance of metals in the early universe.

A Galaxy Encounter Violently Disturbed The Milky Way

The spiral-shaped disc of stars and planets is being pulled, twisted and deformed with extreme violence by the gravitational force of a smaller galaxy - the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC).

Milky Way Family Tree

Galaxies like the Milky Way formed by the merging of smaller progenitor galaxies.

Hubble Sees Unexplained Brightness From Colossal Explosion

Long ago and far across the universe, an enormous burst of gamma rays unleashed more energy in a half-second than the Sun will produce over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

Hubble Observes UGC 12588

Observed with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, the faint galaxy featured in this image is known as UGC 12588.

Black Hole's Dust Ring May Be Casting Shadows From Heart of a Galaxy

Although astronomers have been studying galaxy IC 5063 for decades, it took a non-scientist to make the surprising discovery.

VLA Sky Survey Reveals Newborn Jets In Distant Galaxies

Astronomers using data from the ongoing VLA Sky Survey (VLASS) have found a number of distant galaxies with supermassive black holes at their cores that have launched powerful, radio-emitting jets of material within the past two decades or so. The scientists compared data from VLASS with data from an earlier survey that also used the National Science Foundation's Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to reach their conclusion.

In The Mysterious Blue Ring Nebula, Scientists See The Fate Of Binary Stars

In 2004, scientists with NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer spotted an object unlike any they'd seen in our Milky Way Galaxy: a large, faint blob of gas that seemed to have a star at its center.

Cosmic Flashes Come In All Different Sizes

On May 24, four European telescopes took part in the global effort to understand mysterious cosmic flashes.

The Orbits Of Ancient Stars Prompt A Rethink On The Milky Way's Evolution

Theories on how the Milky Way formed are set to be rewritten following discoveries about the behaviour of some of its oldest stars.

History Of Temperature Changes In The Universe Revealed

How hot is the Universe today? How hot was it before?

A Cosmic Amethyst in a Dying Star

On Earth, amethysts can form when gas bubbles in lava cool under the right conditions. In space, a dying star with a mass similar to the Sun is capable of producing a structure on par with the appeal of these beautiful gems.

Birth Of A Magnetar From A Colossal Collision Potentially Spotted For The First Time

Long ago and far across the universe, an enormous burst of gamma rays unleashed more energy in a half-second than the sun will produce over its entire 10-billion-year lifetime.

Astronomers Discover Clues That Unveil The Mystery Of Fast Radio Bursts

Fast radio bursts, or FRBs - powerful, millisecond-duration radio waves coming from deep space outside the Milky Way Galaxy - have been among the most mysterious astronomical phenomena ever observed.

Hubble Launches Large Ultraviolet-Light Survey of Nearby Stars

The universe would be a pretty boring place without stars. Without them, the universe would remain a diffuse plasma of mostly hydrogen and helium from the big bang.