Latest Luminous infrared galaxy Stories

Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic event they believe was responsible for halting the birth of stars in a galaxy in the early Universe. They report their results in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.The researchers, led by Durham University's Department of Physics and funded by the Royal Society and Royal Astronomical Society say the massive galaxy, SMM J1237+6203, underwent a series of blasts trillions of times more powerful than any caused by an...

A U.S.-led study that shows all of Earth's far infrared background comes from distant galaxies has essentially solved the question of the radiation's origin. The BLAST (Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope) project led by Mark Devlin of the University of Pennsylvania collected data 120,000 feet above Antarctica, enabling researchers to peer into the distant universe at wavelengths nearly unattainable from the ground. During the 1980s and 1990s, certain galaxies called...

A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope offers a rare view of an imminent collision between the cores of two merging galaxies, each powered by a black hole with millions of times the mass of the sun.The galactic cores are in a single, tangled galaxy called NGC 6240, located 400-million light years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Millions of years ago, each core was the dense center of its own galaxy before the two galaxies collided and ripped each other apart. Now, these cores...

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers [1] has discovered a stunning rare case of a triple merger of galaxies. This system, which astronomers have dubbed 'The Bird' - albeit it also bears resemblance with a cosmic Tinker Bell - is composed of two massive spiral galaxies and a third irregular galaxy. The galaxy ESO 593-IG 008, or IRAS 19115-2124, was previously merely known as an interacting pair of galaxies at a distance of 650 million light-years. But...

Start with lots and lots of dark matter, then stir in gas. Let the mixture sit for a while, and a galaxy should rise up out of the batter. This simple recipe for baking galaxies cannot be performed at home, but it does reflect what astronomers are learning about galaxy formation. Like baking bread with yeast, a mysterious substance in the universe called dark matter is required for a galaxy to grow. Now, a new study from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope is refining what is known about this...

Calgary, AB -- If you can't travel to the picturesque sands of Waikiki Beach, you can always do the next-best thing and visit a local shore. Both "hot spots" will get plenty of sun. Astronomers are using a similar sightseeing tactic, studying nearby extreme galaxies known as "luminous infrared galaxies" to learn about their distant counterparts in the early universe. Astronomer Christine Wilson (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory/McMaster University) and her colleagues...

Try mixing caramel into vanilla ice cream -- you will always end up with globs and swirls of caramel. Scientists are finding that galaxies may distribute themselves in similar ways throughout the universe and in places where there is lots of so-called dark matter. "Our findings suggest that unseen dark matter -- which emits no light but has mass -- has had a major effect on the formation and evolution of galaxies, and that bright active galaxies are only born within dark matter clumps of...