We may have dramatically underestimated what lies in the Universe.
NASA snaps beautiful picture of Mars as it inches over towards Earth
NASA astronomers captured a beautiful image of Mars on May 12, when the planet was just 50 million miles away from Earth. Bright snow-capped polar regions and rolling clouds above the rusty landscape show that Mars is a dynamic, seasonal planet, not an inert rock barreling through space.
Hubble captures the death of a star, offering a glimpse of our sun’s final days
A spectacular image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) gives us a glimpse into how the Sun will look at its death.
Hubble’s ‘heir’ is coming together
NASA is very close to reaching a milestone in the construction of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Hubble’s successor that will be launched in 2018.
Astronomers discover huge hydrogen cloud around exoplanet
Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have identified a warm Neptune-sized planet that is “bleeding” a huge hydrogen cloud – thus increasing the odds of finding liquid oceans on gas giants.
New images of Tarantula Nebula may help refine star formation theory
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope recently completed one of its most thorough and ambitious mozaic projectes. Astronomers at Hubble, stitched together some 438 separate images, both in visible and infra-red light, to complete the most accurate picture of the Tarantula Nebula so far, spanning across no less than 600 light-years. The Tarantula nebula contains some 800,000 newly born or developing stars,
Universe at your fingertips – 3D prints of Hubble photos let the blind ‘see’
Captioned above is one of Hubble‘s most famous and beautiful space photos. The photo features NGC 609 – a magnificent star cluster, which Hubble captured complete with colored gas, dust and a slew of stars of various brightness. Pictures like these remind people of the tremendous gift they have – sight. How can one share and hope to convey a
Hubble goes farther than ever before: images reveal deepest view of the Universe yet
This year Hubble will embark on one its most ambitious projects yet, as it’s scheduled to glimpse farther away into the Universe than ever before. Six new “deep field” images are slated, and recently astronomers at Hubble have delivered the first to the public. The image reveals extremely faint, tiny galaxies that may be more than 12 billion light-years away,
The stars of the densest galaxy discovered thus far are 25 times closer than in Milky Way
Using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, followed by observations done with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ground-based optical telescopes, astronomers have identified what’s considered to be the densest galaxy found so far in the nearby part of the Universe. Classed as an “ultra-compact dwarf galaxy” and dubbed as M60-UCD1, the density of stars in the galaxy is about 15,000 greater than that found in Earth’s neighborhood
Farthest supernova discovered by Hubble helps unravel Universe secrets
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have come across the farthest supernova of its type found thus far – a type Ia supernova which exploded some 10 billion years ago. The discovery isn’t just about setting milestones, however. Supernovae act as beacons that help astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe, and this latest finding will help deepen our understanding, especially concerning
Hubble takes brilliant picture of young star population in elderly company
The great pics from Hubble just never end! This time, the brave telescope offered an impressive view of the center of globular cluster NGC 6362. The image of this spherical collection of stars takes a deeper look at the core of the globular cluster, which contains a high concentration of stars with different colors. Seeing what appears to be young
Keep your children close – zombie planet roams once more
The general consensus was that a star called Fomalhaut doesn’t host any planet. But astronomers, the thorough people they are, decided to take another look at it using the Hubble Space Telescope – and the results contradicted the everything, claiming that Fomalhaut does in fact have a planet, and furthermore, this planet (Fomalhaut b) is a unique object, completely shrouded
Universe expansion speed measured better than ever
The universe is expanding – fast. Researchers had a pretty good idea how fast, but now, they measured in even greater detail: it is expanding at a rate of 74.3 plus or minus 2.1 kilometers (46.2 plus or minus 1.3 miles) per second per megaparsec (a megaparsec being about 3 million light-years). Hard to wrap your head around it? Don’t
Faint galaxy sheds light on the dawn of the Universe – many more to be found
The first galaxies formed very fast after the Big Bang – in cosmic time, that is. It’s estimated that the earliest ones appeared some 500 million years after the Big Bang, a period about which researchers know very little. How they observed it Even though they are typically very bright, such galaxies are quite hard to observe because they are
Quasars “snack” regularly, instead of “feasting in one gulp”
Quasars are some of the brightest objects in the Universe. Their formed after black holes devour captured material, like gas dust and stars that come too close, and release bright light that can be seen across the universe. Most of the popular astronomy today is orientated towards the particularly extremely bright quasars; those formed in a singular event consisting of the merger
Cassini sees Saturn stressing out Enceladus, hinting at ocean
Images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have enabled scientists for the first time to create a correlation between spraying of jets of water vapor from fissures on Saturn’s moon Enceladus with Saturn’s gravity and the way it creates stress on the fissure. “This new work gives scientists insight into the mechanics of these picturesque jets at Enceladus and shows that Saturn
Hubble captures Dorado galaxy [PHOTO]
Located some 62 million-light years away, the Dorado constellation is home to a galaxy cluster, called the Dorado Group, comprised of around 70 galaxies. A pretty massive figure by all accounts, considering the Local Group, which also include the Milky Way, contains a mere 30 galaxies under its belt. Recently, Hubble captured a splendid photo of NGC 1483, a barred
Hubble captures photo of earliest galaxy cluster ever found
The ever scientifically productive Hubble just came out with another gem that will help scientists unravel the mysteries of the Universe, after the telescope snapped a photo of a couple of galaxy far, far away, wrapped together in a cosmic dance which most likely led in in the forming of a galaxy cluster – the oldest so far found. Galaxy
‘El Gordo’ – largest galaxy cluster ever seen, is colliding and growing
Galaxy clusters are the biggest stable structures in our Universe that we know of, typically containing 50 to 1000 galaxies. El Gordo Seven billion light years away and two million billion times heavier than our Sun lies El Gordo – which is Spanish for ‘the fat one’. Astronomers reporting at the 219th American Astronomical Society meeting said that at the
Bright, rare galaxy from the dawn of the Universe glimpsed
An array formed by the greatest space telescopes in the world first discover, then photograph this ancient galaxy from the Universe’s dawn – the brightest such galaxy ever discovered by astronomers at such a distance. How far away you ask? Around 12,9 billion light years away, considering the Universe is estimated at 13.7 billion years old, this makes it quite