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 …
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of development. It is the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.
In a random sky survey made in near-infrared light, Hubble found five tiny galaxies clustered together 13.1 billion light-years away. They are among the brightest galaxies at that epoch … Read the rest of this article
A peculiar cosmic explosion first detected by NASA’s Swift observatory on Christmas Day 2010 was caused either by a novel type of supernova located billions of light-years away or an unusual collision much closer to home, within our own galaxy. Papers describing both interpretations appear in the Dec. 1 issue of the journal Nature.
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This animation illustrates two wildly different …
The sun rotates at a respectable 2 kilometers per second, which may sound pretty fast. But according to a study to be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters (arXiv:1111.0157v1), a star has been detected in 30 Doradus (a.k.a. the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud, 160,000 light-years away) spinning at the breakneck speed of 600 kilometers per … Read the rest of this article
An international team of scientists using NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has discovered a surprisingly powerful millisecond pulsar that challenges existing theories about how these objects form.
At the same time, another team has located nine new gamma-ray pulsars in Fermi data, using improved analytical techniques.
A pulsar is a type of neutron star that emits electromagnetic energy at periodic … Read the rest of this article
Behold your galactic center. This NASA Hubble Space Telescope infrared mosaic image represents the sharpest survey of the Galactic Center to date. It reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 x 115 light-years. This sweeping infrared panorama offers a nearby laboratory for how massive … Read the rest of this article
This is the Orion Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 1,500 light-years away. We have the Spitzer Space Telescope and its infrared camera to thank for this incredible image.
There’s just so much to love about this image – the swirling interplay of reds and greens, the hidden constellations peeking through the clouds, the little dots of blues and violets, … Read the rest of this article
A fleet of spacecraft including ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral have shown unprecedented details close to a supermassive black hole. They reveal huge ‘bullets’ of gas being driven away from the ‘gravitational monster’.
Active galaxy Markarian 509 as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope’s WFPC2. Credits: NASA, ESA, J. Kriss (STScI) and J. de Plaa (SRON)
The black hole that the … Read the rest of this article
Two studies appearing in the Aug. 25 issue of the journal Nature provide new insights into a cosmic accident that has been streaming X-rays toward Earth since late March. NASA’s Swift satellite first alerted astronomers to intense and unusual high-energy flares from the new source in the constellation Draco.
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On March 28, 2011, NASA’s Swift detected intense X-ray flares thought …
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