|
Home / News / Tags / galaxies
|
|
30
More: next 50 >>
One of the biggest unanswered questions regarding the Universe today is why there are two types of galaxies, one that has trailing spiral arms, such as our own Milky Way, and one that looks more like a compact ball of stars, known as a barrel galaxy. Astronomers have struggled with this question for a long time, and ... |
24 November 2009
16:01 GMT |
 |
|
Recent astronomical observations seem to point at the fact that the Milky Way, our own galaxy, is currently colliding with a dark, high-velocity cloud of hydrogen gas, known as Smith's Cloud. The formation may be a galaxy in itself, according to the most recent hypothesis, and not a common one. In fact, astronom... |
23 November 2009
06:03 GMT |
|
|
Centaurus A is a very active galaxy, whose core is currently producing a large number of stars. It is believed that, 200 to 700 million years ago, it collided with another similar structure, which it consumed. The remains of that galaxy are still being ground down in the core of the former, triggering a large number ... |
21 November 2009
02:32 GMT |
|
|
Using the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) instrument aboard the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have recently snapped an amazing, highly detailed image of the galaxy NGC 4710. In its analysis of the images, the team discovered that the structure revealed an X-shaped bulge that was uncharacteri... |
18 November 2009
09:02 GMT |
|
|
Usually, when analyzing the skies with advanced telescopes, the only types of black holes whose existence can be inferred from their effects on normal matter are either the small or the supermassive kind. For many years, there seemed to be no intermediary stages in their development, a fact that had astronomers puzzl... |
11 November 2009
14:31 GMT |
|
|
According to scientists at the Durham University, the galaxies in the early Universe were highly active when it came to forming new stars, and generated about 50 of the new suns every year. The experts determined that previous estimates about the setup inside these galaxies were a bit off, in that their ability to fo... |
11 November 2009
01:13 GMT |
|
|
According to the standard cosmological model, the Big Bang – the event that created our Universe – took place about 13.7 billion years ago. After that, the Cosmos began expanding and producing all types of structures, which would eventually differentiate in things we know today, such as galaxy, clusters a... |
7 November 2009
04:12 GMT |
|
|
Astronomers working on radio observatories in the United States are, at this point having a field day. Most television networks have moved to all-digital signals this June, and so a significant portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, on which they sent their signals before, has now been cleared of “chatter&rdq... |
6 November 2009
21:51 GMT |
|
|
Since the crew of space shuttle Atlantis repaired the famous Hubble Space Telescope, earlier this year, the quality of the scientific data coming in from the observatory has increased substantially. Its new instruments now function flawlessly, having undergone a few months of testing, calibration and preliminary obse... |
6 November 2009
02:23 GMT |
|
|
Astronomers using the Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System (VERITAS), in Amado, Arizona, have recently announced that they discovered very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray emissions coming in from the starburst galaxy M82, also known as the Cigar Galaxy. According to the team, the radiations are very po... |
3 November 2009
02:52 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
Astronomers handling the Chandra Space Telescope, one of NASA's four Great Observatories, have recently announced they they've discovered one of the most distant clusters of galaxies in the Universe, located at a distance of about 10.2 billion light-years away from our planet. According to the experts, the ... |
23 October 2009
02:26 GMT |
|
|
Examining the properties of black holes is not precisely the easiest thing in the world to do. In fact, one may argue that it's pretty difficult, considering that there is no way of probing them directly. They would engulf any spacecraft we send in their vicinity, and they also bend and swallow light, which mean... |
20 October 2009
03:56 GMT |
|
|
Understanding the current state of the Universe has less to do with analyzing the way things are now, and more to do with finding out how things were in the early days, when the first galaxies and black holes appeared from the chaos that existed after the Big Bang. For this very purpose, experts with the Sloan Digita... |
14 October 2009
15:51 GMT |
|
|
The Hubble Space Telescope has recently imaged a very weird-looking galaxy, which appears to be a two-armed spiral one at first glance. However, upon closer inspection, astronomers discovered that the formation was, in fact, the result of a massive, high-speed collision, taking place approximately 250 million light-y... |
14 October 2009
02:59 GMT |
|
|
In a groundbreaking, new image, astronomers and astrophysicists will finally have the opportunity to study one of the rarest events in the observed Universe, namely the collision and merger of two black holes. While it may be that the current generation, and many others after it, will not live to see it, the data col... |
8 October 2009
03:44 GMT |
|
|
For all its massive size, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is a bit slow when it comes to forming new stars. This is not the case with other large galaxies, which produce young, blue suns at very high rates. These areas of intense star production, known as stellar nurseries, have long been associated with radiation, and a ... |
2 October 2009
20:31 GMT |
|
|
During the night of September 14-15, the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) experienced its first light, in an event that marked the beginning of a new type of quest for dark matter. The new method relies on the now-emerging technology known as baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO), which may have the ability... |
2 October 2009
05:37 GMT |
|
|
According to a new scientific study, it may be that dark matter, the elusive stuff that binds galaxies together, but that cannot be directly observed, does not exist at all. It's either that, or it has a very unusual set of properties, astrophysicists at the University of St Andrews, in the United Kingdom, say. ... |
1 October 2009
10:13 GMT |
|
|
One of the latest images collected by the Hubble Space Telescope before its overhaul – earlier this year – shows stellar winds wreaking havoc through a pair of galaxies, preventing stellar formations from taking shape inside and distorting their shapes significantly. The phenomenon, known as “ram pr... |
30 September 2009
11:13 GMT |
|
|
In their own time, ninjas were perfect at hiding themselves in the shadows, and at navigating the darkness flawlessly, away from any light. However, in modern time, they would be easily discovered by a soldier wearing infrared goggles, as ScienceDaily accurately points out. In an attempt to translate this reasoning t... |
22 September 2009
19:01 GMT |
|
|
Scientists with alloted observation hours on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) have recently announced that they've photographed the most distant galaxies ever observed with a telescope. Shuttle Atlantis' mission to the orbit-based observatory translated into a new batch of cameras and scientific equipment, ... |
17 September 2009
21:41 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
Astronomers at the University of Florida have used one of the most advanced observation instruments in the world today for the first time. The FLAMINGOS-2 (Florida Array Multi-object Imaging Grism Spectrometer) device, affixed to the eight-meter Gemini South telescope in the Chilean Andes, snapped its first picture o... |
16 September 2009
07:06 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
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 |
|
|
As a massive galaxy, the Milky Way is surrounded and orbited by a large number of smaller, dwarf galaxies. Ever since astronomers discovered this, they have been trying to determine what faith awaits our galaxy, and if future collisions and bombardments on the Milky Way's inner disk are possible. A new study has... |
1 September 2009
03:39 GMT |
|
|
Ever since astronomers started differentiating between spiral and elliptical galaxies, they have wondered what precisely makes some galaxies develop their trademark arms, while others remain without them. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is a spiral one, featuring two, or, according to new studies, four arms. A team of... |
22 August 2009
03:49 GMT |
|
|
Over decades of astronomical observations, experts from around the world have determined that the ratio of small to large stars in the Universe is fixed. They have defined smaller stars as being as large as our Sun or smaller, while larger stars are 20 times or more the mass of the Sun. They have believed that, for e... |
20 August 2009
03:47 GMT |
|
|
According to a new complex computer simulation, it would appear that the earliest black holes that where formed after the Big Bang were in fact a lot smaller than the giants they are today. Also, the simulation revealed that older theories, which held that the formations accumulated mass quickly and gobbled up matter... |
15 August 2009
03:04 GMT |
|
|
Scientists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have recently completed running numerous simulations of how the earliest black holes that appeared in the Universe may have looked like, and how they could have influenced the development of other forms of matter. Their investigation revealed that the structures ... |
11 August 2009
06:45 GMT |
|
|
Scientists gained the ability to peer way back into the Universe's history some time ago, but some of the discoveries they made were not exactly in tune with some of the theories that were developed to explain astronomical phenomena today. In a recent such find, distant stars, estimated to be about 11 billion li... |
6 August 2009
01:03 GMT |
|
|
Dwarf spheroidal galaxies (dSph) are among the most peculiar types of galaxies in the Universe. The low luminosity formations have first been observed as companions to the Milky Way and to the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), but understanding how they formed and where they came from is one of the most long-standing mysteries... |
31 July 2009
10:45 GMT |
|
|
At locations between 1.5 billion and five billion light-years away, amateur astronomers have recently discovered a new class of small galaxies, which they dubbed “Green Peas.” The tiny formations, which are up to 100 times less massive than the Milky Way, and up to ten times smaller, are producing stars a... |
28 July 2009
04:23 GMT |
|
|
The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported yesterday that the country had postponed the launch of its first space telescope by two years, until 2012, due to cost problems. The Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) will be the country's first observatory, originally scheduled for launch in 2010, as part of... |
24 July 2009
19:01 GMT |
|
|
A new, supermassive black hole, estimated to have 100 million times the mass of the Sun, has been discovered at the center of the NGC 1097 galaxy, located some 50 million light-years away from our planet. The formation became visible in a new Spitzer Space Telescope image, taken in the far- and near-infrared waveleng... |
24 July 2009
01:45 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
In an international cooperative effort, experts managing the Chandra X-Rays Observatory, belonging to the American space agency NASA, and the optical Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, on top of the Mauna Kea volcano, in Hawaii, have taken one of the most complex and revealing pictures to date of the Stephan’s Qui... |
10 July 2009
03:55 GMT |
|
|
Experts from the US Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the Michigan State University, and the Stanford University have recently managed to use computer models to simulate the way in which the first twin stars in the very early Universe were formed. Stretching as far back as 200 mi... |
10 July 2009
03:01 GMT |
|
|
Astronomers have recently discovered a new method of determining the speed and conditions under which supermassive black holes get thrown out of their host galaxies, when the formations collide with others, and the new black hole is larger than the first “inhabitant” of the galactic core. An international... |
10 July 2009
02:48 GMT |
|
|
In new observations of the distant skies, astronomers managed to identify two supernova explosions that far exceeded any known record of age and distance. The Type IIn bodies were estimated to be approximately 11 billion years old, about two times more so than the previous record-holder, a supernova that exploded som... |
9 July 2009
04:16 GMT |
|
|
The southern constellation of Centaurus, located approximately 14 million light-years away, is home to two very important things – the massive galaxy Centaurus A and a monster black hole, which has about 50 million times the mass of our Sun. The galaxy, for some reason, cannot be viewed very clearly in optical ... |
7 July 2009
10:27 GMT |
|
|
Almost everyone who is interested in space has heard about black holes, the mysterious structures in the Universe, which have the power to make massive galaxies spin around them. Up until now, these formations have been divided in only two classes – small or supermassive – although the existence of a thir... |
2 July 2009
02:30 GMT |
|
|
After using two ground-based observatories and a space telescope as primary instruments, a wide and long-term astronomical effort, designed to discover the most distant galaxy clusters in the early Universe, has finally come to an end. Scientists at the University of California in Riverside (UCR) looked only after cl... |
1 July 2009
16:01 GMT |
|
|
Officials at the European Space Agency (ESA) have recently released an image of the Messier 51 galaxy, also known as the Messier Galaxy, which was partially collected by the newly launched Herschel Space Telescope, and partially by the famous Hubble Space Telescope. The composite photograph shows the well-known galax... |
1 July 2009
13:01 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
Lyman-alpha blobs (LAB) are, quite simply put, the largest things in the Universe. They dwarf galaxies, and, when they were first discovered about a decade ago, seemed to only exist to annoy astronomers. Made entirely out of hydrogen gas, the blobs also glow, a feat that has had astrophysicists thinking for years. No... |
25 June 2009
02:52 GMT |
|
|
It is widely accepted that the Universe exploded into existence some 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created the first light and the first amounts of matter, which then immediately started expanding. Over millions of years, galaxies and black holes began to differentiate, and, after the reionization stage e... |
18 June 2009
19:01 GMT |
|
|
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 |
|
|
While investigating the skies in search of colliding galaxies, astronomers working with the Subaru telescope, on Mauna Kea, in Hawaii, have discovered what amounts to the skid marks left behind by cars before crashing. Debris ejected by two galaxies while approaching each other and during their collision form a path ... |
10 June 2009
16:41 GMT |
|
More: next 50 >> |
|
|
