Astronomy | SpaceRef

Astronomy TOP STORY

In Colliding Galaxies, a Pipsqueak Shines Bright

Mars Imaged by Hubble

In the nearby Whirlpool galaxy and its companion galaxy, M51b, two supermassive black holes heat up and devour surrounding material.

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Astronomy TOP STORIES

Hundreds of Thousands of Previously Unknown Galaxies Mapped

Previously Unknown Galaxies

An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published the first phase of a major new radio sky survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) telescope.

Citizen Scientist Finds Ancient White Dwarf Star Encircled by Puzzling Rings

A volunteer working with the NASA-led Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project has found the oldest and coldest known white dwarf -- an Earth-sized remnant of a Sun-like star that has died -- ringed by dust and debris. Astronomers suspect this could be the first known white dwarf with multiple dust rings.

Hubble Captures Smoking Gun of a Newborn Star

In this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured the smoking gun of a newborn star, the Herbig-Haro objects numbered 7 to 11 (HH 7-11).

NGC 1501 As Seen By Hubble

This image from Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 showcases NGC 1501, a complex planetary nebula located in the large but faint constellation of Camelopardalis (The Giraffe).

Merging Neutron Stars

The option to measure the gravitational waves of two merging neutron stars has offered the chance to answer some of the fundamental questions about the structure of matter.

A Stellar Flare 10 Billion Times More Powerful than Those on the Sun

The Hawaii-based James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) has discovered a stellar flare 10 billion times more powerful than the Sun's solar flares

SOFIA Finds Dust Survives Obliteration in Supernova 1987A

Dust particles form as dying red giant stars throw off material and become part of interstellar clouds of various sizes, densities and temperatures.

Gaia Clocks New Speeds for Milky Way-Andromeda Collision

ESA's Gaia satellite has looked beyond our galaxy and explored two nearby galaxies to reveal the stellar motions within them and how they will one day interact and collide with the Milky Way -- with surprising results.

Bubbles Of Brand New Stars

This region of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) glows in striking colours in this image captured by the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT).

How Stars May Form

How have stars and planets developed from the clouds of dust and gas that once filled the cosmos? A novel experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has demonstrated the validity of a widespread theory known as "magnetorotational instability," or MRI, that seeks to explain the formation of heavenly bodies.

Hubble Accidentally Discovers New Galaxy in Cosmic Neighborhood

The universe is very cluttered. Myriad island cities of stars, the galaxies, form a backdrop tapestry.

NICER Mission Maps 'Light Echoes' of New Black Hole

Scientists have charted the environment surrounding a stellar-mass black hole that is 10 times the mass of the Sun using NASA's Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) payload aboard the International Space Station.

New Maps of Thousands of Nearby Galaxies

The latest data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) includes observations revealing the internal structure and composition of nearly 5,000 nearby galaxies observed during the first three years of a program called Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA).

Digital Sky Survey Issues Biggest Astronomical Data Release Ever

The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, in conjunction with the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), is releasing the second edition of data from Pan-STARRS -- the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System -- the world's largest digital sky survey.

Active Galaxies Point To New Physics Of Cosmic Expansion

Investigating the history of our cosmos with a large sample of distant 'active' galaxies observed by ESA's XMM-Newton, a team of astronomers found there might be more to the early expansion of the Universe than predicted by the standard model of cosmology.

Machine-Learning Code Sorts Through Telescope Data

A new telescope will take a sequence of hi-res snapshots with the world's largest digital camera, covering the entire visible night sky every few days -- and repeating the process for an entire decade.