Researchers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory have uncovered young, massive, compact galaxies whose raucous star-making parties are ending early. The firestorm of star birth has blasted out most of the remaining gaseous fuel needed to make future generations of stars. Now the party’s over for these gas-starved galaxies, and they are on track to possibly becoming … Read the rest of this article
The same phenomenon that causes a bumpy airplane ride, turbulence, may be the solution to a long-standing mystery about stars’ birth, or the absence of it, according to a new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Galaxy clusters are the largest objects in the universe, held together by gravity. These behemoths contain hundreds or thousands of individual galaxies … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers have found a pulsating, dead star beaming with the energy of about 10 million suns. This is the brightest pulsar – a dense stellar remnant left over from a supernova explosion – ever recorded. The discovery was made with NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR.
“You might think of this pulsar as the ‘Mighty Mouse’ of stellar remnants,” … Read the rest of this article
Astronomers have found an unlikely object in an improbable place: a monster black hole lurking inside one of the tiniest galaxies known.
Though the black hole is five times the mass of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way, it is inside a galaxy that crams 140 million stars within a diameter of about 300 light-years, only … Read the rest of this article
Explore M82 X-1 and learn more about how astronomers used X-ray fluctuations to determine its status as an intermediate-mass black hole.
Astronomers have uncovered rhythmic pulsations from a rare type of black hole 12 million light-years away by sifting through archival data from NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) satellite.
The signals have helped astronomers identify an unusual midsize black … Read the rest of this article
They may be little, but they pack a big star-forming punch. New observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope show small galaxies, also known as dwarf galaxies, are responsible for forming a large proportion of the universe’s stars.
Studying this early epoch of the universe’s history is critical to fully understanding how these stars formed and how galaxies grew and evolved … Read the rest of this article
The Herschel Space Observatory has uncovered a weird ring of dusty material while obtaining one of the sharpest scans to date of a huge cloud of gas and dust, called NGC 7538. The observations have revealed numerous clumps of material, a baker’s dozen of which may evolve into the most powerful kinds of stars in the universe. Herschel is a … Read the rest of this article
A new exhibit steeped in the cinematic world of “The Avengers” provides a super-powered dose of science and technology from NASA. The unique, interactive educational display premiered at Discovery Times Square in New York City on May 30, 2014, for a six-month engagement.
Marvel’s Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. — an acronym for Scientific Training and Tactical Intelligence Operative Network — is an … Read the rest of this article
What happens when two neutron stars collide? Using a sophisticated computer simulation, NASA scientists have visualized this violent scenario in awesome degenerate-matter-crushing detail.
Neutron stars are the result of supernovae spawned by stars 8-30 times the mass of our sun. Occasionally, however, two neutron stars may meet, becoming entangled in a deep gravitational embrace. Should this scenario play out, one … Read the rest of this article
When we gaze up at the night sky, we are only seeing part of the story. Unfortunately, some of the most powerful and energetic events in the Universe are invisible to our eyes – and to even the best optical telescopes.
Luckily, these events are not lost; they appear vividly in the high-energy sky, making them visible to space-based telescopes … 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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