ESA’s XMM-Newton observatory has helped to uncover how the Universe’s first stars ended their lives in giant explosions.
Astronomers studied the gamma-ray burst GRB130925A – a flash of very energetic radiation streaming from a star in a distant galaxy – using space- and ground-based observatories.
They found the culprit producing the burst to be a massive star, known as a … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has weighed the largest known galaxy cluster in the distant universe, catalogued as ACT-CL J0102-4915, and found it definitely lives up to its nickname — El Gordo (Spanish for “the fat one”).
By measuring how much the cluster’s gravity warps images of galaxies in the distant background, a team of astronomers has calculated the cluster’s mass … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Great Observatories are teaming up to look deeper into the universe than ever before. With a boost from natural “zoom lenses” found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as much as 100 times fainter than what the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra space telescopes can typically see.
This ambitious collaborative program is called The Frontier … Read the rest of this article
ESA’s Planck space telescope has been turned off after nearly 4.5 years soaking up the relic radiation from the Big Bang and studying the evolution of stars and galaxies throughout the Universe’s history.
Project scientist Jan Tauber sent the final command to the Planck satellite at 12:10:27 UT on October 23, 2013, marking the end of operations for ESA’s ‘time … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been providing astounding images of the universe since April 1990 and has led to remarkable discoveries. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation telescope that will peer even deeper into space and unveil even more mysteries. Both of these extraordinary telescopes are now the topics of two free e-books available from the Apple iBookstore.… Read the rest of this article
The first instrument to be completed for the James Webb Space Telescope, MIRI, was handed over by the European consortium that built it to ESA at a ceremony held in London today, and will now be delivered to NASA aiming for launch in 2018.
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MIRI, the Mid Infrared Instrument, being prepared for vibration testing at the Science and Technology Facilities …
An exceptional galaxy cluster, the largest seen in the distant universe, has been found using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and the National Science Foundation-funded Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) in Chile.
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A composite image shows El Gordo in X-ray light from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory in blue, along with optical data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in …
Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away.
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This artist’s concept illustrates a quasar, or feeding black hole, similar to APM …
Galaxies once thought of as voracious tigers are more like grazing cows, according to a new study using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
Astronomers have discovered that galaxies in the distant, early universe continuously ingested their star-making fuel over long periods of time. This goes against previous theories that the galaxies devoured their fuel in quick bursts after run-ins with other … Read the rest of this article
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