NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered the largest known population of globular star clusters, an estimated 160,000, swarming like bees inside the crowded core of the giant grouping of galaxies Abell 1689. By comparison, our Milky Way galaxy hosts about 150 such clusters.
Studying globular clusters is critical to understanding the early, intense star-forming episodes that marked galaxy formation. The … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and ESO’s New Technology Telescope to explore more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy. They have found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a surprising result given their different histories and varied properties.
The final stages of life for a … Read the rest of this article
This video begins with a view of the stars in the constellation Cygnus, zooms into the Cygnus OB2 association region, and then into a Hubble view of protostar IRAS 20234+4057. This light-year-long knot of interstellar gas and dust resembles a caterpillar on its way to a feast.
This beautifully bright, light-year-long cloud of gas and dust particles was caught by … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have taken a major step in explaining why material around the giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy is extraordinarily faint in X-rays. This discovery holds important implications for understanding black holes.
New Chandra images of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), which is located about 26,000 light-years from Earth, indicate that … Read the rest of this article
This new view of the Orion A star-formation cloud from ESA’s Herschel space observatory shows the turbulent region of space that hugs the famous Orion Nebula.
The nebula lies about 1500 light years from Earth within the ‘sword of Orion’ – below the three main stars that form the belt of the Orion constellation.
In this view, the nebula corresponds … Read the rest of this article
A spectacular Nova explosion in constellation Delphinus was discovered on August 14th – SLOOH covered it live yesterday to showing this amazing event as it happened in true color – narrated by SLOOH’s Bob Berman.
The nova explosion was of a previously unseen White Dwarf star. The star explosion became visible near the constellation Delphinus on the 14th, and it … Read the rest of this article
Scientists using ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope have discovered that a curious dead star has been hiding one of the strongest magnetic fields in the Universe all along, despite earlier suggestions of an unusually low magnetic field.
The object, known as SGR 0418+5729 (or SGR 0418 for short), is a magnetar, a particular kind of neutron star.
A neutron star is … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have solved a 40-year mystery on the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of gas stretching nearly halfway around our Milky Way galaxy.
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, two dwarf galaxies orbiting the Milky Way, are at the head of the gaseous stream. Since the stream’s discovery by radio telescopes in … Read the rest of this article
The mysterious, almost mystical bright light emerging from these thick, ominous clouds is actually a telltale sign of forming stars.
Here, a very young star is being born in the guts of the dark cloud LDN 43 – a massive blob of gas, dust and ices, gathered 520 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus, The Serpent Bearer.
Stars … Read the rest of this article
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has provided the strongest evidence yet that short-duration gamma-ray bursts are triggered by the merger of two small, super-dense stellar objects, such as a pair of neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole.
The definitive evidence came from Hubble observations in near-infrared light of the fading fireball produced in the aftermath of a … Read the rest of this article
The Sun Now (Visible light)
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The Sun Now (H-Alpha light)
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Aurora Oval
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Aurora Oval
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