Tag: milky way

March 25, 2022

The Milky Way isn't exactly a young buck.

The Milky Way collided with a galaxy in the past — and this shaped our galaxy

by Paula Ferreira

February 17, 2022

With the Gaia observatory data, we know a recent merge happened in our galaxy.

These annotated images, obtained with the GRAVITY instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) between March and July 2021, show stars orbiting very close to Sgr A*, the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way. One of these stars, named S29, was observed as it was making its closest approach to the black hole at 13 billion kilometres, just 90 times the distance between the Sun and Earth. Another star, named S300, was detected for the first time in the new VLTI observations. To obtain the new images, the astronomers used a machine-learning technique, called Information Field Theory. They made a model of how the real sources may look, simulated how GRAVITY would see them, and compared this simulation with GRAVITY observations. This allowed them to find and track stars around Sagittarius A* with unparalleled depth and accuracy.

Astronomers zoom in on stars around Milky Way’s supermassive black hole

December 14, 2021

The new observations are 20 times closer and sharper than ever before.

Strange radio waves picked up from center of Milky Way baffle astronomers

October 12, 2021

The signals don't match any known source. It could be an entirely new cosmic object.

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the massive galaxy cluster MACSJ 1206. Embedded within the cluster are the distorted images of distant background galaxies, seen as arcs and smeared features. These distortions are caused by the dark matter in the cluster, whose gravity bends and magnifies the light from faraway galaxies, an effect called gravitational lensing. This phenomenon allows astronomers to study remote galaxies that would otherwise be too faint to see. (NASA, ESA, G. Caminha (University of Groningen), M. Meneghetti (Observatory of Astrophysics and Space Science of Bologna), P. Natarajan (Yale University), the CLASH team, and M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble))

Could this be the oldest galaxy in the universe?

December 24, 2020

If galaxies were human, GN-z11 would want you to get off its lawn.

Astronomers find ‘fossil galaxy’ buried deep inside the Milky Way

November 24, 2020

The 10 billion-year-old fossil was named Heracles after the Greek Hero who was made immortal when the Milky Way was ...

An artist's impression of a gravitational microlensing event by a free-floating planet. (Jan Skowron / Astronomical Observatory, University of Warsaw)

‘Lonely’ Rogue Planet Discovered Wandering the Milky Way

November 3, 2020

Astronomers have discovered a free-floating planet, not associated with any parent star wandering our galaxy.

An artist's impression of a collision between the Milky Way and a smaller dwarf galaxy, such as that which occurred about eight to 10 billion years agoV. Belokurov (Cambridge, UK) based on an image by ESO/Juan Carlos Muñoz)

A dwarf galaxy may have collided with the Milky Way 3 billion years ago

October 21, 2020

Shell-like structures in the Milky Way were created when a dwarf galaxy plunged through our galaxy’s heart around 3 billion ...

Comet NEOWISE Comes into Focus for a Close-up

August 26, 2020

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning close-up image of comet NEOWISE, which recently captured the public’s imagination becoming ...

This artist's conception illustrates a Jupiter-like planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star. (NASA)

Rogue Planets Could Outnumber Stars in the Milky Way

August 24, 2020

We might have to revise the commonly accepted image of planets orbiting a parent star.

The Milky Way’s halo might be thousands of times hotter than the sun’s surface

June 2, 2020

The halo surrounding the Milky Way may be much hotter than originally thought.

This artist’s impression shows the orbits of the objects in the HR 6819 triple system. This system is made up of an inner binary with one star (orbit in blue) and a newly discovered black hole (orbit in red), as well as a third object, another star, in a wider orbit (also in blue). The team originally believed there were only two objects, the two stars, in the system. However, as they analysed their observations, they were stunned when they revealed a third, previously undiscovered body in HR 6819: a black hole, the closest ever found to Earth. The black hole is invisible, but it makes its presence known by its gravitational pull, which forces the luminous inner star into an orbit. The objects in this inner pair have roughly the same mass and circular orbits. The observations, with the FEROS spectrograph on the 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla, showed that the inner visible star orbits the black hole every 40 days, while the second star is at a large distance from this inner pair.

ESO astronomers find the closest black hole to Earth

May 6, 2020

The stars in the same triple system as the black hole are so close they can be seen with the ...

An artist’s impression of S5-HVS1’s ejection by Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the galaxy. The black hole and the captured binary partner to S5-HVS1 are seen far away in the left corner of the picture, while S5-HVS1 is in the foreground, speeding away from them. ( James Josephides (Swinburne Astronomy Productions))

Runaway star ejected from the centre of the Milky Way at incredible speed

November 19, 2019

Astronomers have identified a runaway star travelling at an incredible 6 million kilometres per hour, ejected by the supermassive black ...

Another study confirms the Milky Way is warped and twisted rather than a flat disc

August 2, 2019

The Milky Way's shape resembles that of a hat with the brim down in front and up in back.

An artist visualization of the star S0–2 as it passes by the supermassive black hole at the Galactic centre. As the star gets closer to the supermassive black hole, light it emits experiences a gravitational redshift that is predicted by Einstein's General Relativity. By observing this redshift, we can test Einstein's theory of gravity (Nicole R. Fuller, National Science Foundation)

Einstein’s General Relativity passes the test at the centre of our Galaxy

July 26, 2019

A brave star and a supermassive black hole confirm Einstein's theory of general relativity.

The local void - a vast cosmic structure surrounding our Milky Way galaxy - been mapped in extraordinary detail in a new study, suggest the reason our galaxy doesn't travel with the expansion of the universe.

Astronomers map the Local Void – the huge “nothingness” surrounding the Milky Way

July 24, 2019

The new study explains why our galaxy doesn't travel with the expansion of the universe.

The Milky Way once devoured a dwarf galaxy 10 billion years ago

July 23, 2019

The study might help scientists understand how galaxies evolve.

Artist impression of a warped Milky Way. Credit: CHEN Xiaodian.

The Milky Way’s outer disk may actually be warped and twisted

March 7, 2023

Torque is warping the galaxy's outer disk in an S-shape.

The Earth is smack in the middle of a ‘dark matter hurricane’