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Home / News / Tags / Milky Way
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By combining a number of scientific images from NASA's three Great Observatories – the Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, and the Chandra X-ray Observatory –, scientists at the American space agency managed to create a stunning view of our galaxy, the Milky Way. The amazing photo, which was release... |
11 November 2009
01:28 GMT |
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Gamma-ray bursts (GRB) are among the most peculiar phenomena in the Universe. Their sources are not very well known, although some evidence exists of possible origins. Since they were first discovered, some 50 years ago, they have sparked excitement in the scientific community, and have made astronomers believe that ... |
4 November 2009
21:51 GMT |
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The Jewel Box star cluster, also known as NGC 4755 or the Kappa Crucis Cluster, is one of the finest open star clusters discovered thus far in the Universe. It lies in the southern-hemisphere constellation of Crux, and it's located some 6,400 light-years away from Earth. The formation is one of the most importan... |
29 October 2009
18:01 GMT |
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Central Michigan University professor Axel Mellinger has recently compiled a new groundbreaking image of the night sky, with the Milky Way at its center, by stitching up more than 3,000 individual photographs. The high-resolution panoramic view, presented in an interactive manner here, can be used by professional and... |
28 October 2009
12:22 GMT |
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The orbit-based Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope may have discovered signs of dark matter colliding with its antiparticles at the core of our galaxy, the Milky Way, its science team reports. Dark matter is a proposed form of matter that was introduced in calculations to try to make sense of the way our Universe behave... |
20 October 2009
03:29 GMT |
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Data from satellites charged with producing a map of our solar system and its limits have revealed that our “bubble” ends with a very narrow ribbon of densely packed neutral atoms, rather than with an area of evenly distributed ones. The fringes of the solar system can only be imagined, astronomers say, i... |
16 October 2009
04:07 GMT |
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A new image, released by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), reveals the glow of the elusive galaxy NGC 6822, which is a companion of the Milky Way, and a member of the local galactic group. The formation is visible as a glow beneath the layer of stars that can be found in the immediate vicinity of our own galax... |
14 October 2009
16:51 GMT |
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In 1988, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) astrophysicist Jack Hills used the theory of gravity to calculate the existence of a peculiar class of stars, whose members traveled faster than the galactic escape velocity. His calculations were inferred from a theoretical model in which a binary star system passed ver... |
30 September 2009
20:51 GMT |
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The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has finally released its third and final map of the Milky Way, as part of the GigaGalaxy Zoom project. The last image completes the first two nicely, and provides would-be explorers and astronomers with the necessary tools they need to understand which cosmic bodies are which i... |
28 September 2009
08:36 GMT |
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Scientists from the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) have recently revealed the second image of the Milky Way, taken as part of the ongoing GigaGalaxy Zoom project. The first image was released less than a week ago, as we were telling you at the time. While the last photo was an i... |
21 September 2009
06:34 GMT |
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In a new study of the M31 galaxy, our closest galactic neighbor from the Andromeda Constellation, the American space agency's Swift satellite managed to snap the most complex and detailed image of its ultraviolet sources. Experts say that some 20,000 of them are visible in the new, high-resolution picture, and t... |
17 September 2009
01:48 GMT |
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The International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) saw the launch of numerous projects related to cosmic exploration. One of the most useful is the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) GIGAGALAXY ZOOM project, which aims at creating three amazing, ultra-high-resolution images of the night sky that online starga... |
15 September 2009
03:46 GMT |
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A new, high-detail telescope image has recently revealed one of our galactic neighbors, situated relatively nearby, which mimics the Milky Way in more ways than one. The spiraled giant has been dubbed NGC 4945, following astronomers' habit of terming all cosmic objects with catchy names. In the recent photograph... |
2 September 2009
09:48 GMT |
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According to scientists who went through the massive volumes of data beamed back by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Integral observatory, the peculiar radiations that permeate our galaxy, the Milky Way, are not caused by the elusive dark matter, as previously believed. These types of radiations were identified... |
3 August 2009
02:48 GMT |
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Many astronomers have speculated that the peculiar distribution of certain forms of gamma-rays in our galaxy, the Milky Way, may be evidence to support the presence of some form of undetectable “dark matter,” which influences its spread patterns. But these theories are disproved by two new scientific pape... |
10 July 2009
11:01 GMT |
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Astronomers and astrophysicists studying stellar nurseries – the places inside galaxies where conditions are perfect for the formation of new stars – and crowded galactic cores will soon have at their disposal a new survey of the skies, to use in assessing probabilities of where such places may exist. The... |
3 July 2009
15:01 GMT |
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Despite the fact that the concept of dark matter has no yet been directly proven, and no amount of it has ever been studied, researchers at the Durham University have recently proposed that the formation of the Milky Way is largely favored by the fact that it was immersed in a large cloud of the elusive matter. That ... |
1 July 2009
05:30 GMT |
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Astronomers using the Spitzer Telescope for stellar observations have recently discovered three new stars at the core of the Milky Way, which live in a particularly harsh environment. Outer space, as a whole, is not the friendliest neighborhood to live in, but the conditions that these stellar formations bear are bey... |
11 June 2009
01:40 GMT |
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Ultracold subdwarfs are a newly discovered class of stars that was found revolving around the Milky Way, in orbits that are so peculiar they make almost no sense. These peculiar, faint stars are not very bright, and they may even come from other galaxies, moving across the void that usually separates galactic formati... |
10 June 2009
18:41 GMT |
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Astronomers working with the Very Large Telescope (VLT), operated in Chile by the European Southern Observatory (ESO), finally managed to infer the real size of the giant elliptical galaxy Messier 87, also known as M87, Virgo A or NGC 4486. According to the recent investigation, it would appear that some of the galax... |
21 May 2009
15:41 GMT |
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In a study to be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, experts at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics argue that hundreds or thousands of rogue black holes could exist in the Milky Way, and that they could also reside all around us. Theories relat... |
30 April 2009
16:31 GMT |
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Gleaming at supernova remnants (SNR) is not always easy, mostly because they are either very distant, or because they are surrounded by large amounts of dust. In either case, direct observations become very difficult, because only observatories working in radio, infrared, or ultraviolet wavelengths can pierce through... |
23 April 2009
09:56 GMT |
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According to a recent infrared study of the Triangulum Galaxy, also known as M33, our “neighbor” appears to be larger than its observations in visible light have suggested until now. The new measurements have been conducted with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which specializes in resolving infrared ... |
8 April 2009
03:00 GMT |
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According to astronomical predictions, astronomers looking at the skies in the distant future will have the distinct impression that the Milky Way is the only galaxy in the Universe, as the force known as dark energy will completely erase the Big Bang's fading signal, and will push other collections of star syst... |
24 February 2009
04:15 GMT |
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Astronomers say that our galaxy, the Milky Way, collided with another similar formation over 2 billion years ago, an accident whose repercussions, they say, can still be identified today in the speed of the stars around our solar system. Mostly, the velocity differences are clearer if we look at the celestial bodies ... |
23 February 2009
08:43 GMT |
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Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, who have been analyzing the distant J114816.64+525150.3 quasar, have found out that the earliest galaxies, of which one is observable from Earth, are most likely the place for intense stellar formation, in processes up to 1,000 times more m... |
5 February 2009
05:07 GMT |
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Astronomers now believe they may have found the answer to a very old question in the field – how were huge early galaxies able to create massive amounts of stars without devouring each other to gain matter? The answer may lie within the mysterious dark matter, which researchers now say helped channel gas from a... |
22 January 2009
03:56 GMT |
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It's common knowledge that black holes reside in the center of each galaxy, where they happily feed on galactic gases emanating from dying stars and other cosmic bodies, such as planetary nebulas. But, in the case of two known galaxies, M31, our “neighbor” the Andromeda Galaxy, and NGC 5866, there ar... |
13 January 2009
10:05 GMT |
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Astronomers recently discovered two embryonic stars that are forming within a few light-years of Milky Way's center, which is occupied by a massive black hole. Normally, this type of vicinity is deadly to forming celestial bodies, and scientists believed until now that no new formations could take place within t... |
6 January 2009
18:01 GMT |
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Following the latest research results, astronomers concluded, during the 213th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, that our galaxy, the Milky Way, is about 50 percent heavier than previously thought, and that the speed with which it spins is also much greater than first calculated. The scientists came to th... |
6 January 2009
05:30 GMT |
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It's impossible to observe black holes directly with today's technology, especially since they're, well, black, and no light escapes so that their shape and existence can be detected. But scientists are pretty sure that almost (if not all) galaxies hold one such mysterious object at their core. This is... |
11 December 2008
05:36 GMT |
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The Omega Centauri is the largest glittering jewel that lights up the skies of the south. The behemoth formation that comprises millions of stars is found in the Centaurus constellation, some 17,000 light years away from Earth. It can even be observed directly, with the unaided eye, as it shines at a magnitude of 3.7... |
3 December 2008
05:01 GMT |
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The material surrounding and circling the black hole of the Milky Way, called Sagittarius A*, emits flares of radiation. Two Chilean telescopes have managed to spot the event simultaneously for the first time. This allows for a better understanding of the phenomena going on in that place, otherwise unobservable due t... |
19 November 2008
09:25 GMT |
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The European Organization for Astronomical Research (ESO)'s Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera placed on the 2.2-m Max-Planck telescope from the La Silla observatory site, at an altitude of 2.4 km in the Chilean desert of Atacama, was able to obtain accurate photographs of one of the most massive binary star systems... |
23 October 2008
08:13 GMT |
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A recent study indicates that the top speed stars in our own galaxy may have been assimilated after being ejected from a dwarf one that merged with the Milky Way. This kind of stars are dubbed “hypervelocity” stars, and were mostly believed to be originating from our galaxy's core, from where th... |
15 October 2008
03:31 GMT |
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A recent study indicates that there are stars in the proximity of the Milky Way's core that feed on dark matter, thus prolonging their lifespan with more than a billion years. Finding them would possibly help understanding what dark matter really is and how exactly it functions.Although responsible for 22% of th... |
3 October 2008
05:47 GMT |
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Recent simulations performed by astrophysicists demonstrate that in galaxies such as Milky Way, stars like our sun travel far from their place of origin. Back in 1633, Galileo Galilei came up with a theory that placed Earth in the orbit of the sun and that led to the Church and public opinion, under fire, threa... |
16 September 2008
05:35 GMT |
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The most detailed map of the chemical composition of the galaxy we live in has been recently released by the research team of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, after completing the study of a population of stars extending on a radius of more than 30,000 light years around the Sun. "This compilation of the compositions of... |
13 June 2008
09:47 GMT |
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When it was first discovered in the 1980s the deceptive shape of the object known as G350.1-0.3 indicated that it was most likely a background galaxy. Since nobody ever bothered to study it more closely, the object remained forgotten until recently when observations with ESA XMM-Newton X-ray Space Observatory reveale... |
11 June 2008
05:55 GMT |
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Since the days of radio observations, astronomers believed that the Milky Way galaxy, in which our solar system is located, has four spiral arms wrapped around the central galactic nucleus. But radio observations are only able to detect concentrations of gas in the galaxy and what previously appeared to be two spiral... |
4 June 2008
02:41 GMT |
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Our galaxy contains about 1 trillion solar masses, says a recent estimation regarding the weight of the Milky Way. All previous estimates showed that the galaxy has a mass ranging between 750 billion to over 2 trillion times that of our Sun, the latter being slightly favored and probably closest to the true weight. H... |
28 May 2008
03:51 GMT |
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As it travels through the Milky Way, the Sun experiences a periodical oscillation in relation to the galactic plane, meaning that the solar system intersects with some of the densest areas of the galaxy. This in turn can send comets and asteroids our way and determine catastrophic impacts with the Earth, such as that... |
13 May 2008
09:31 GMT |
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How does the ESA prepare for the launch of a new probe? Well, apparently, by taking several pictures of its partner's spacecraft. ESO's La Silla 2.2 meter telescope was recently used by three researchers to photograph NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, orbiting Earth from a distance of 1.5 mi... |
9 May 2008
09:15 GMT |
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Globular star clusters are believed to be amongst the oldest objects in the universe, some with ages exceeding 13 billion years. They can be usually found in the company of other galaxies as satellites, containing several million stars packed into a very small volume of space. Because they contain some of the first s... |
29 April 2008
03:33 GMT |
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The discovery of what appears to be yet another case of cosmic cannibalism between a massive galaxy and a dwarf one, similar to that between the Milky Way and the Sagittarius dwarf galaxy satellite, confirms the prediction of the cold dark matter model of cosmology, stating that large spiral galaxies formed through m... |
16 April 2008
09:25 GMT |
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Iota Horologii is a yellow-orange star, located about 56 light-years away from Earth, in the Horologium constellation, and one of a large population of stars drifting through the Milky Way in the same general direction. New observations conducted with the help of one of ESO's 3.6 meter telescopes proved that in ... |
16 April 2008
03:45 GMT |
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With the help of observations made with NASA, JAXA and ESA's X-ray satellites, astronomers revealed that the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, dubbed Sagittarius A*, suffered a massive outburst some three centuries ago. Sagittarius A* is about 4 million times more massive than the Sun, however... |
16 April 2008
02:52 GMT |
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It's not the first time - and probably not the last either - when your galaxy commits acts of cannibalism against its smaller companions orbiting around it. Researchers from the Research School of Astronomy at the Australian National University reveal that they have discovered debris of a possible encounter betw... |
8 April 2008
02:42 GMT |
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Dark matter is believed to be responsible for more than 70 percent of the total mass of the universe, however somehow we can't find any, even while regular matter represents only 4 percent of the total mass. This means only two things: either dark matter presents weak interactions towards ordinary matter or dark... |
7 April 2008
10:24 GMT |
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Omega Centauri is one of Milky Way's most massive globular star cluster, located about 17,000 light years away from Earth and containing several millions of stars. Evidence suggests that there may be a massive object in its core, with tremendous gravitational pull, possibly a medium-sized black hole with a mass ... |
2 April 2008
10:32 GMT |
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