Latest Galaxy Stories
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] The strange galaxy Centaurus A is pictured in a new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). With a total exposure time of more than 50 hours this is probably the deepest view of this peculiar and spectacular object ever created. The image was produced by the Wide Field Imager of the MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile. Centaurus A, also known as NGC 5128 [1], is a peculiar massive elliptical galaxy with a...
Researchers working at the University of Bonn in Germany have used computer simulations to discover the first evidence that the way in which stars form depends upon the conditions of their birth environments, claims a new study published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In a Friday statement, the Society said that the properties of stars, which are believed to form in interstellar space from gas and dust clouds, are dependent upon the surrounding conditions...
Researchers say life-bearing planets may exist in vast numbers in the space between stars in the Milky Way A few hundred thousand billion free-floating life-bearing Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way. So argues an international team of scientists led by Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, Director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham, UK. Their findings are published online in the Springer journal Astrophysics and...
An international team of astronomers led by David Pinfield of the University of Hertfordshire has found a brown dwarf that is more than 99% hydrogen and helium. Described as ultra-cool, it has a temperature of just 400 degrees Celsius and its discovery could be a key step forward in helping astronomers distinguish between brown dwarfs and giant planets. The researchers publish their work in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Brown dwarfs are star-like objects...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has made detailed observations of the dwarf galaxy NGC 2366. While it lacks the elegant spiral arms of many larger galaxies, NGC 2366 is home to a bright, star-forming nebula and is close enough for astronomers to discern its individual stars. The starry mist streaking across this image obtained by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is the central part of the dwarf galaxy known as NGC 2366. The most obvious feature in this...
Astronomers have found that a number of stars that form during the early lives of galaxies may be influenced by the massive black holes in the center of the celestial suburb. The team, using the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel Space Observatory, looked a distant galaxies that were far enough away that the light reaching Herschel is from billions of years ago. "Herschel provides a new perspective and is conducting a number of surveys of galaxies near and far, in order to unravel...
WASHINGTON, May 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Herschel is a European Space Agency-led mission with...
[ Video 1 ] | [ Video 2 ] A new image of Messier 55 from ESO's VISTA infrared survey telescope shows tens of thousands of stars crowded together like a swarm of bees. Besides being packed into a relatively small space, these stars are also among the oldest in the Universe. Astronomers study Messier 55 and other ancient objects like it, called globular clusters, to learn how galaxies evolve and stars age. Globular clusters are held together in a tight spherical shape by gravity. In...
WASHINGTON, May 2, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Astronomers have gathered the most direct evidence yet of a supermassive black hole shredding a star that wandered too close. NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, a space-based observatory, and the Pan-STARRS1 telescope on the summit of Haleakala in Hawaii, were among the first to help identify the stellar remains. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Supermassive black holes, weighing millions to billions...
It’s very difficult to kick a star out of the galaxy. In fact, the primary mechanism that astronomers have come up with that can give a star the two-million-plus mile-per-hour kick it takes requires a close encounter with the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s core. So far astronomers have found 16 of these “hypervelocity” stars. Although they are traveling fast enough to eventually escape the galaxy’s gravitational grasp, they have been discovered while they are still...
Latest Galaxy Reference Libraries
Image Caption: The Hubble Extreme Deep Field (XDF) was completed in September 2012 and shows the farthest galaxies ever photographed by humans. Each speck of light in the photo is an individual galaxy, some of them as old as 13.2 billion years; the observable universe is estimated to contain more than 200 billion galaxies. Credit: NASA/Wikipedia What is Cosmology? I once commented to an acquaintance that I was fascinated by the field of Cosmology, and mused that if I had more time, I...
The Virgo Cluster consists of galaxies at a distance of around 59 Mly away in the constellation Virgo. Containing between 1300 to 2000 galaxies the Virgo Cluster is the heart of the Local Supercluster. Its mass is estimated at 1.2 × 1015 M☉ out to 8 degrees of the cluster's center or a radius of about 2.2 Mpc. Most of the brighter galaxies in the cluster were discovered by Charles Messier in the late 1770's and early 1780's, including the giant elliptical Messier 87. Messier...
The two Magellanic Clouds (or Nubeculae Magellani), composed of the Large Megellanic Cloud and the Small Magellanic Cloud, are irregular dwarf galaxies visible in the southern hemisphere. They are members of our Local Group and orbit the Milky Way galaxy. Persian astronomer Al Sufi, in 964, was the first to have written anything about the Magellanic Clouds proving they have been known since early time amongst the Middle East peoples. Sufi, in his Book of Fixed Stars, calls the clouds...
The M96 Group (also known as the Leo I Group), one of many in the Virgo Supercluster, is located within the Leo constellation and contains between 8 and 24 galaxies, including three Messier objects. The Leo Triplet, which is physically near M96 Group, and M96 may actually be separate parts of a much larger group.
The M81 Group, containing the well known galaxies Messier 81 and Messier 82, is a group of galaxies within the constellation Ursa Major. Along with Messier 81 and 82 are several other galaxies with apparent brightness. The center, located at an approximate distance of 3.6 Mpc, is one of the nearest groups to the Local Group. The total estimated mass of the group is (1.03 ± 0.17) × 1012M☉. The Virgo Supercluster contains the M81 Group, the Local Group, and some other nearby...
