Latest Milky Way Stories
WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes, as well as a cosmic magnification effect, astronomers have spotted what could be the most distant galaxy ever seen. Light from the young galaxy captured by the orbiting observatories first shone when our 13.7-billion-year-old universe was just 500 million years old. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) The far-off galaxy existed...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Since the 1990's, dark energy has been the most accepted hypothesis to explain the expansion rate of the Universe. A hypothetical form of energy, dark energy is thought to permeate all of space and accounts for about 73% of the total mass-energy of the universe. According to a team of astronomers from the University of Portsmouth and LMU University Munich, dark energy isn't so theoretical anymore. They say, it is really there....
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The heavens above are littered with trillions and trillions of stars packed into hundreds of billions of galaxies that are being painstakingly mapped out by astronomers. The Galaxy Zoo project also incorporates the help of volunteers to map, and classify, the galaxies that have been found via the hundreds of thousands of telescope images. While most of these galaxies take on the classic spiral or elliptical shape, some have...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Millions of black holes have been discovered, as well as extreme galaxies called hot DOGs using NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission. The telescope has helped reveal millions of dusty black hole candidates throughout the universe, and about 1,000 dustier objects that are thought to be the brightest galaxies ever found called dust-obscured galaxies, or hot DOGs. "WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects,"...
WASHINGTON, Aug. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new sky survey has revealed that our Milky Way galaxy may not be as special as scientists had previously thought. The Milky Way is a fairly common type of galaxy, but being paired up with neighbors like the Magellanic Clouds makes it stick out above the rest, so much so that astronomers thought it could be a one of a kind occurrence. However, astronomer Dr. Aaron Robotham burst everyone's bubble when searching for groups of...
redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online An image of an isolated galaxy located approximately nine million light years from the Milky Way has been captured using the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA officials announced on Friday. The picture features a relatively isolated, dwarf irregular galaxy known as DDO 190, which officials from the US space agency describe as relatively small and lacking in structure. The galaxy, which was identified and code named in honor of the...
Watch the Video: Simulation of Star Clusters Encounter Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Hubble Space Telescope has been keeping its eyes fixed on two clusters full of massive stars that may be in the early stages of merging. The star clusters are about 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, which is a small satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. What was thought to have been just one cluster in the star-forming region commonly referred to as the...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have identified the most massive and luminous galaxy cluster ever found, pumping out 740 new stars per year in the central galaxy. The Phoenix cluster was named after the constellation in which it resides, but its more formal name is SPT-CLJ2344-4243. The galaxy cluster sits seven billion light-years away from Earth, and dwarfs most known clusters. Aside from its mass and brightness, Michael McDonald, a Hubble Fellow...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers at the University of Zurich, ETH Zurich, the University of Leicester and NOAC Beijing have found large amounts of invisible "dark matter" near the Sun. They also found tantalizing hints of a new dark matter component within our own galaxy. The study results, which will be published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, are consistent with the theory that the Milky Way is surrounded by a massive...
Latest Milky Way Reference Libraries
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 Local Group, compromising more than 30 galaxies (including dwarf galaxies and the Milky Way), is a group of galaxies with a gravitational center located somewhere between the Milky Way and the Andromeda Galaxy. With a binary (dumbbell) shape and a total mass of (1.29 ± 0.14) × 1012M the Local group covers a 10 million light-year diameter. The local group is part of the Virgo Supercluster. The two largest galaxies in the group are the Milky Way and the Andromeda both Spiral...
At a distance of 3.9 Mpc from the Milky Way, the Sculptor Group is one of nearest groups of galaxies to the Local Gropu. Sculptor is made up of a loose group of galaxies near the south galactic pole. The Sculptor Galaxy (NGC 253) and a few other galaxies form a gravitationally-bound core in the center of this group, however, since they are only weakly bound the group may also be described as a filament. There also some other galaxies associated with the group but not gravitationally...
Aquila (the Eagle) Constellation -- Location: Northern Hemisphere; Coordinates: Right Ascension: 20h; Declination: 05; Source: Various cultures - Greek, Arab, Persian, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean The story behind the name In the ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean cultures, the constellation Aquila is seen as the shape of a flying bird. The pattern contains three prominent stars that can be seen to outline the wings of a bird, but are also the focus of quite different myths...
![Taken Under the \](/media/gallery/spitzer-space-telescope-sirtf/thumbs/thumbs_738999main_pia16884-full_full.jpg "Taken Under the \")
![Sagittarius Galaxy Impacts Milky Way\](/media/gallery/national-science-foundation-gallery/thumbs/thumbs_pf3134_sgr_h.jpg "Sagittarius Galaxy Impacts Milky Way\")
