Hubble Space Telescope observations suggest that the broad "brim" of the Sombrero galaxy may conceal a turbulent past. Clues to a rough-and tumble history lie in the galaxy's extended halo.
Using Hubble and a new observing technique, astronomers have uncovered the smallest clumps of dark matter ever detected. Dark matter is an invisible substance that makes up most of the universe's mass and forms the scaffolding upon which galaxies are built.
Observations with the 8-meter Gemini North telescope, a program of the NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, have allowed astronomers to pinpoint the location of a Fast Radio Burst in a nearby galaxy — making it the closest known example to Earth and only the second repeating burst source to have its location pinpointed in the sky. The source of this burst of radio waves is located in an environment radically different from that seen in previous studies. This discovery challenges researchers’ assumptions on the origin of these already enigmatic extragalactic events.
Hubble has photographed a majestic spiral galaxy, UGC 2885, located 232 million light-years away. The galaxy is 2.5 times wider than our Milky Way and contains 10 times as many stars. Astronomers want to know how it got so big.
Astronomers using Hubble have studied a unique class of young, migratory exoplanets that have the density of cotton candy. Nothing like them exists in our solar system. They orbit the star Kepler 51, located 2,600 light-years away. Hubble spectroscopic observations allowed researchers to refine mass estimates for these worlds—independently confirming their “puffy” nature.
A team of astronomers proposes a new method of using Webb to determine whether a rocky exoplanet has an atmosphere. The technique, which involves measuring the planet’s temperature as it passes behind its star and then comes back into view, is significantly faster than more traditional methods of atmospheric detection.
The University of Warwick has received over £900,000 to provide essential contributions to the international DUNE experiment, which aims to answer fundamental questions about our universe.
Next year, NASA plans to launch a new Mars rover to search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet.
Houston Methodist researchers are studying Italian sports car maker Automobili Lamborghini’s carbon fiber materials in space.
Hubble has taken the sharpest view to date of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov whose speed and trajectory indicate it has come from beyond our solar system. The image, taken October 12, 2019, reveals a central concentration of dust around the comet's nucleus.
A new Hubble study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal reports the best measurements yet for how much and how fast gas flows in and out of the Milky Way. Astronomers were surprised to find a surplus of incoming gas, leaving them with new questions to answer about how our galaxy works.
The first-ever comet from beyond our Solar System has been successfully imaged by the Gemini Observatory in multiple colors. The image of the newly discovered object, denoted C/2019 Q4 (Borisov), was obtained on the night of 9-10 September using the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini North Telescope on Hawaii’s Maunakea.
An international team of astronomers has discovered one of the largest features ever observed in the center of the Milky Way – a pair of enormous radio-emitting bubbles that tower hundreds of light-years above and below the central region of our galaxy. This hourglass-like feature, which dwarfs all other radio structures in the galactic center, is likely the result of a phenomenally energetic burst that erupted near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole a few million years ago.
A few years before NASA astronaut Jessica Meir began learning to fly a spacecraft for her upcoming trip to the International Space Station
A new study indicates that some exoplanets may have better conditions for life to thrive than Earth itself has.
New radio wave images made with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) provide a unique view of Jupiter’s atmosphere down to fifty kilometers below the planet’s visible (ammonia) cloud deck.
Observations made with a new instrument developed for use at the 2.1-meter (84-inch) telescope at the National Science Foundation’s Kitt Peak National Observatory have led to the discovery of the fastest eclipsing white dwarf binary yet known. Clocking in with an orbital period of only 6.91 minutes, the rapidly orbiting stars are expected to be one of the strongest sources of gravitational waves detectable with LISA, the future space-based gravitational wave detector.
What can turn a seemingly perfect ocean-rich planet into an uninhabitable desert wasteland? Two future space explorers aim to find out in "The Habitable Zone: Scorched Earth Enigma," a science-grounded sci-fi video from the NASA's Universe of Learning project. While the story is a work of fiction, the ideas are pulled directly from current exoplanet science and vetted by astronomers and education specialists.
Summary: Using the both ALMA and the VLT, astronomers have imaged the cold, rock-strewn rings encircling the planet Uranus. Rather than observing the reflected sunlight from these rings, ALMA and the VLT imaged the millimeter and mid-infrared “glow” naturally emitted by the frigidly cold particles of the rings themselves.
Astronomers have directly imaged two exoplanets that are gravitationally carving out a wide gap within a planet-forming disk surrounding a young star. This is only the second multi-planet system to be photographed.
Astronomers have assembled an image containing about 265,000 galaxies that stretch back through 13.3 billion years of time. Called the Hubble Legacy Field, the snapshot represents the largest and most comprehensive “history book” of galaxies ever made. Astronomers assembled the wide portrait from 7,500 individual exposures taken from 16 years' worth of Hubble observations in ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, capturing the key features of galaxy assembly over time.
New ALMA observations show there is ordinary table salt in a not-so-ordinary location: 1,500 light-years from Earth in the disk surrounding a massive young star.
The ALMA telescope is conducting an unprecedented survey of nearby disk galaxies to study their stellar nurseries. With it, astronomers are beginning to unravel the complex and as-yet poorly understood relationship between star-forming clouds and their host galaxies.
Astronomy professor Chad Trujillo is on a team that's searching for Planet X, and while they're still looking for the elusive orb, the team has discovered other planets and more moons around Jupiter.
ALMA discovered two young stars forming from the same swirling protoplanetary disk; one has more in common with planets than the other.
A natural “battery” of briny liquids and volcanic minerals may have produced Mars’ organic carbon, according to new analysis of three Martian meteorites by a team including researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
A new Hubble observing campaign, called BUFFALO, will boldly expand the space telescope's view into regions adjacent to huge galaxy clusters previously photographed by the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes under a program called Frontier Fields.
The conditions for life surviving on planets entirely covered in water are more fluid than previously thought, opening up the possibility that water worlds could be habitable, according to a new paper from the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University.
Based on new data, researchers suggest that it takes more than a massive outburst to destroy the mammoth star Eta Carinae. The 1840s eruption may have been triggered by a prolonged stellar brawl among three rowdy sibling stars, which destroyed one star and left the other two in a binary system. This tussle may have culminated with a violent explosion when Eta Carinae devoured one of its two companions, rocketing more than 10 times the mass of our Sun into space. The ejected mass created gigantic bipolar lobes resembling the dumbbell shape seen in present-day images.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed Saturn and Mars near their closest approaches to Earth in June and July 2018. It’s now summertime in Saturn’s northern hemisphere and springtime in Mars’ southern hemisphere. The Hubble images show that Earth isn’t the only planet where intense spring and summer storms wreak havoc.
In April 2018, NASA launched the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS). Its main goal is to locate Earth-sized planets and larger “super-Earths” orbiting nearby stars for further study. One of the most powerful tools that will examine the atmospheres of some planets that TESS discovers will be NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Since observing small exoplanets with thin atmospheres like Earth will be challenging for Webb, astronomers will target easier, gas giant exoplanets first.
Some of the tiniest diamonds in the universe – bits of crystalline carbon hundreds of thousands of times smaller than a grain of sand – have been detected swirling around three infant star systems in the Milky Way. These microscopic gemstones are neither rare nor precious; they are, however, exciting for astronomers who identified them as the source of a mysterious cosmic microwave “glow” emanating from several protoplanetary disks in our galaxy.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope's unparalleled sharpness and spectral range, an international research team has created the most comprehensive, high-resolution ultraviolet-light survey of star-forming galaxies in the local universe. The LEGUS data provide detailed information on 39 million young, massive stars and 8,000 star clusters, and how their environment affects their development.
An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have detected helium in the atmosphere of the exoplanet WASP-107b. This is the first time this element has been detected in the atmosphere of a planet outside the solar system. The discovery demonstrates the ability to use infrared spectra to study exoplanet extended atmospheres.
Scientists have decoded faint distortions in the patterns of the universe’s earliest light to map huge tubelike structures invisible to our eyes – known as filaments – that serve as superhighways for delivering matter to dense hubs such as galaxy clusters.
In the search for extraterrestrial life, scientists have turned over all sorts of rocks. Mars, for example, has geological features that suggest it once had — and still has — subsurface liquid water, an almost sure prerequisite for life. Scientists have also eyed Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus as well as Jupiter’s moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto as possible havens for life in the oceans under their icy crusts. Now, however, scientists are dusting off an old idea that promises a new vista in the hunt for life beyond Earth: the clouds of Venus.
Scientists have used the Hubble Space Telescope to chemically analyze the gas in the Leading Arm (the arching collection of gas that connects the Magellanic Clouds to the Milky Way) and determine its origin.
Scientists have designed a conceptual spacecraft to deflect Earth-bound asteroids and evaluated whether it would be able to nudge a massive asteroid – which has a remote chance to hitting Earth in 2135 – off course.
With NASA’s Juno spacecraft, scientists have gotten a good look at the top and bottom of the planet for the first time. What they found astounded them: bizarre geometric arrangements of storms, each arrayed around one cyclone over the north and south poles—unlike any storm formation seen in the universe.
Scientists using NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have found a larger than expected amount of water in the atmosphere of WASP-39b, a hot, bloated, Saturn-mass exoplanet located about 700 light-years from Earth. Though no planet like this resides in our solar system, WASP-39b can provide new insights into how and where planets form around a star.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have made the most precise measurement to date of the rate at which the universe is expanding the big bang. This may mean that there's something unknown about the makeup of the universe. The new numbers remain at odds with independent measurements of the early universe's expansion.
An international team of astronomers led by the University of Southampton has confirmed the discovery of the most distant supernova ever detected – a huge cosmic explosion that took place 10.5 billion years ago, or three-quarters the age of the Universe itself.
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have conducted the first spectroscopic survey of the Earth-sized planets within the habitable zone around the nearby star TRAPPIST-1. Hubble reveals that at least three of the exoplanets (d, e, and f) do not seem to contain puffy, hydrogen-rich atmospheres similar to gaseous planets such as Neptune. The results, instead, favor more compact atmospheres like those of Earth, Venus, and Mars.
A University of Washington study has found a simple approach to look for life that might be more promising than just looking for oxygen.
By combining the visible and infrared capabilities of the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, astronomers and visualization specialists from NASA's Universe of Learning program have created a new three-dimensional fly-through movie of the Orion nebula, a nearby stellar nursery.
At a special session held during the American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington, D.C., scientists on the Dark Energy Survey (DES) announced today the public release of their first three years of data. This first major release of data from the Survey includes information on about 400 million astronomical objects, including distant galaxies billions of light-years away as well as stars in our own galaxy.
Astronomers using the GBT have discovered what appears to be a grand exodus of more than 100 hydrogen clouds streaming away from the center of the Milky Way and heading into intergalactic space.
When they began their work, researchers discovered that the first thing they needed to do was to digitize the audio. Five years later, the team is completing its work, which has led to advances in technology to convert speech to text, analyze speakers and understand how people collaborated to accomplish the missions.
NASA has selected an APL proposal to send an innovative, instrumented rotorcraft to Saturn's largest moon for further development.
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