galaxy

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Sombrero Galaxy Might Need a New Name
Pair of Photos 20 Years Apart
Show a Big Galaxy Change
in case you missed it
Dec 7, 2024 6:00 AM CST

Pair of Photos 20 Years Apart Show a Big Galaxy Change

Photo by Webb Space Telescope shows Sombrero Galaxy looking less sombrero-ish than Hubble did

(Newser) - Late last month, NASA released its "Astronomy Picture of the Day" —actually a combo of two pictures, taken two decades apart. The first is a 20-year-old photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope of the so-called Sombrero Galaxy, a galaxy nearly 30 million light-years away whose oval brim...

This Is Racing Through Our Galaxy at Top Speed
This Is Racing
Through Our
Galaxy at
Top Speed
in case you missed it
Jun 23, 2024 7:20 AM CDT

This Is Racing Through Our Galaxy at Top Speed

J1249+36 is flying 1,500 times faster than sound

(Newser) - When you fly by at a million miles an hour, it can turn some heads—which is just what happened with this runaway star. Snappily named J1249+36, it's going fast enough to break free of our galaxy's gravitational pull and launch into intergalactic space, Newsweek reports. The question...

In a First, Astronomers Watch a Black Hole Wake Up
In a First, Astronomers
Watch a Black Hole Wake Up
NEW STUDY
Jun 19, 2024 10:30 AM CDT

In a First, Astronomers Watch a Black Hole Wake Up

Black hole at center of galaxy SDSS1335+0728 recorded activating 'in real time'

(Newser) - A bright light erupting from a distant galaxy nearly five years ago was, in the view of researchers, way cooler than it sounds. Indeed, it was the first ever observation of the awakening of a black hole, according to a study accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysics . Most galaxies...

6-Planet Solar System in Milky Way Has Scientists in Awe

'My jaw was on the floor,' says one of discovery made by NASA, ESA planet-hunting satellites

(Newser) - Astronomers have discovered a rare in-sync solar system with six planets moving like a grand cosmic orchestra, untouched by outside forces since their birth billions of years ago. The find, announced Wednesday in the journal Nature, can help explain how solar systems across the Milky Way galaxy came to be....

New Telescope Gives Deepest View Ever of Cosmos

Humans have never had such a look, in time or distance

(Newser) - Our view of the universe just expanded: The first image from NASA's new space telescope unveiled Monday is brimming with galaxies and offers the deepest look of the cosmos ever captured. The first image from the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope is the farthest humanity has ever seen...

Milky Way's Black Hole Is Unveiled
Milky Way's
Black Hole
Is Unveiled
May 12, 2022 10:04 AM CDT

Milky Way's Black Hole Is Unveiled

Astronomers offer first look at 'gentle giant' Sagittarius A*

(Newser) - The world got a look Thursday at the first wild but fuzzy image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, per the AP . Astronomers believe nearly all galaxies, including our own, have these giant black holes at their center, where light and matter...

Millions of Years After Big Bang, a 'Cosmic Dawn'

Astronomers say they've figured out when first stars began shining

(Newser) - For his entire working life, Richard Ellis has been obsessed with finding out when the universe's first stars began shining. Now, in a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society journal, Ellis and his team at University College London say they've pinpointed the...

'Eye of Sauron' Glares at Us From Across the Universe
Astronomers
Spot 'a Very
Curious Object'
in case you missed it
May 30, 2020 1:45 PM CDT

Astronomers Spot 'a Very Curious Object'

They say it's about 11B light-years away

(Newser) - Media outlets are calling it the "Eye of Sauron" or "Ring of Fire"—scientists, "R5519." Whatever the name, it's an odd-looking galaxy that might just alter how science views the early formation of galaxies in the universe, LiveScience reports. Scientists say they spotted the...

Our Galaxy Might See a 'Spectacular Death'

The 'supergiant' star Betelgeuse is getting dimmer

(Newser) - Keep your telescope handy: Betelgeuse might be about to blow. Astronomers say the "supergiant" star, which sits 650 light-years away, is at its dimmest in about a century—meaning we could witness our galaxy's first supernova in the telescopic era, Science Alert reports. "It kept getting fainter,...

This Black Hole Can't Exist. And There It Is

LB-1 is way more massive than other stellar black holes in our galaxy

(Newser) - A stellar black hole, 70 times the mass of our sun? Not likely, experts said—and yet, there it is. A group of Chinese-led scientists have spotted this "monster" black hole some 15,000 light-years away and dubbed it LB-1, the Washington Post reports. "Black holes of such...

Star Will 'Die All Alone' After Being 'Evicted' by Black Hole

Launched from Milky Way center, S5-HVS1 is going so fast it won't ever be able to get back to our galaxy

(Newser) - A "serendipitous discovery" has been made, and it's an exciting but bittersweet one. Five million years ago, a star got too close to what Space.com calls the Milky Way's "heart of darkness"—a supermassive black hole named Sagittarius A* — and got hurled away...

There's a Weirdly Huge Hole Out There

And one scientist thinks she knows what happened

(Newser) - There's a massive hole in the outskirts of the Milky Way, and no one knows what caused it—but one scientist has an idea. "The on-sky morphology suggests a recent, close encounter with a massive and dense perturber," says Harvard scientist Ana Bonaca in a new presentation...

Smaller Galaxy on Track to Smash Into Milky Way
Our Milky Way
Is Headed Toward
a Violent 'Merger'
NEW STUDY
Jan 4, 2019 10:39 AM CST

Our Milky Way Is Headed Toward a Violent 'Merger'

But we've got about 2 billion years to prepare

(Newser) - It'll be a fireworks show for the ages, but you won't be around to see it. Consider that a blessing in disguise: The display expected by astrophysicists at Durham University in the UK will only come as a nearby galaxy smashes into our own in about 2 billion...

Paper: Advanced Civilizations May Be Stealing Starlight

Chicago professor Dan Hooper says it makes perfect sense

(Newser) - Watch out for stars moving across galaxies or losing power—it could be aliens gathering energy before the lights go out. Dan Hooper, an astronomy and astrophysics professor at the University of Chicago, posted a paper in the preprint journal arXiv.org arguing that aliens in far-off galaxies may be...

Interstellar 'Space Grease' Detected in Vast Quantities

'This space grease is not the kind of thing you’d want to spread on a slice of toast'

(Newser) - President Trump's " Space Force " might need to carry some heavy-duty cleaning products. A team of astronomers has determined that the universe is a much greasier and dirtier place than once thought, with grease-like molecules known as aliphatic carbon thinly spread throughout interstellar space, the Guardian reports. As...

Milky Way's Center Is a Black Hole 'Farm'

Researchers believe there are thousands

(Newser) - The center of our galaxy is teeming with black holes, sort of like a Times Square for strange super-gravity objects, astronomers have discovered. For decades, scientists theorized that circling in the center of galaxies, including ours, were lots of stellar black holes, collapsed giant stars where the gravity is so...

Galaxy With No Dark Matter Baffles Astronomers

NGC1052–DF2 is 'weird'

(Newser) - It's a double cosmic conundrum: Lots of stuff that was already invisible has gone missing. Astronomers have found a distant galaxy where there is no dark matter. Dark matter is called "dark" because it can't be seen. It is the mysterious and invisible skeleton of the universe...

Universe Has Way, Way More Galaxies Than We Thought

And that means a better chance of intelligent life somewhere out there

(Newser) - And you thought the universe made you feel small and insignificant before. Popular Science reports astronomers working with data from Hubble now say there are at least 2 trillion galaxies in the universe. That's at least 10 times as many as the 100 billion to 200 billion estimated back...

With Radio Telescope's First Image, 1.3K Galaxies Revealed

MeerKAT radio telescope will only get more impressive

(Newser) - Scientists promised it would be the world's most powerful radio telescope, capable of exploring dark energy, black holes, and traces of the universe's creation 14 billion years ago. South Africa's MeerKAT has already exceeded expectations. Though operating at a quarter of its eventual capacity with 16 of...

Astronomers Spot 'Biggest Structure in Universe'

Galaxy supercluster is 1B light years across

(Newser) - A newly identified cosmic feature is so enormous that it has left some of the finest minds in astronomy well and truly boggled. The BOSS—named after the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey—is a wall, or supercluster, of at least 830 galaxies connected by filaments of gas, which Smithsonian likens...

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