Dark Matter Ring

May 16, 2007
1 Comment


This Hubble Space Telescope composite image shows a ghostly ‘ring’ of dark matter in the galaxy cluster Cl 0024+17. The ring-like structure is evident in the blue map of the cluster’s dark matter distribution. The map is superimposed on a Hubble image of the cluster. The ring is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date for the existence

…

Read the rest of this article

The Brightest Supernova Ever

May 8, 2007
Leave a comment


Artist’s illustration of supernova SN 2006gy
Credit: Illustration: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; X-ray: NASA/CXC/UC Berkeley/N.Smith et al.; IR: Lick/UC Berkeley/J.Bloom & C.Hansen

The brightest stellar explosion ever recorded may be a long-sought new type of supernova, according to observations by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes. This discovery indicates that violent explosions of extremely massive stars were relatively common in the …

Read the rest of this article