Latest National Optical Astronomy Observatory Stories

Two enormous black holes appear to be orbiting one another at the center of a faraway galaxy, formed by the collision of two separate galaxies, astronomers from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson reported Wednesday.The two supermassive black holes are locked in orbit about 5 billion light years away from Earth, the scientists said.  One light year is the distance light travels in a year, approximately 6 trillion miles.Data from Apache Point Observatory in New...

Astronomers studying new images of a nearby galaxy cluster have found evidence that high-speed collisions between large elliptical galaxies may prevent new stars from forming, according to a paper to be published in a November 2008 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters.Led by Jeffrey Kenney, professor and chair of astronomy at Yale, the team saw a spectacular complex of warm gas filaments 400,000 light-years-long connecting the elliptical galaxy M86 and the spiral galaxy NGC 4438 in the...

Researchers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered large amounts of simple organic gases and water vapor in a possible planet-forming region around an infant star, along with evidence that these molecules were created there. They've also found water in the same zone around two other young stars.By pushing the telescope's capabilities to a new level, astronomers now have a better view of the earliest stages of planetary formation, which may help shed light on the origins of our...

Observations of the interacting binary star using telescopes at Kitt Peak National Observatory and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that the disks of hot gas that accumulate around a wide variety of astronomical objects"”from degenerate stars in energetic binary systems to supermassive black holes at the hearts of active galaxies"”are likely to be much larger than previously believed.The target of this specific investigation, named WZ Sagittae (WZ Sge), is an interacting binary star...

PASADENA, Calif. - Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away. The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA's Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population. Their discovery implies there were hundreds of millions of additional black holes growing in our young universe, more than doubling the total amount known at that distance. "Active, supermassive black...

A beautiful new image of spiral galaxy IC 342 that takes advantage of the dark night sky at Kitt Peak National Observatory is being released today in Washington, DC, at the opening of "The Night: Why Dark Hours Are So Important," a two-day symposium hosted at the Carnegie Institution.IC 342 is located in the constellation Camelopardalis, "the giraffe." From our perspective on Earth, this galaxy is viewed through much of the stars and interstellar dust and gas within our own galaxy, the Milky...

A team led by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has been selected by NASA to develop a concept for a space mission to characterize the mysterious "Dark Energy'' that permeates the Universe and causes its expansion to accelerate. Known as Destiny, the Dark Energy Space Telescope, the small spacecraft would detect and observe more than 3,000 supernovae over its two-year primary mission to measure the expansion history of the Universe,...

NOAO -- In a feat resembling an intergalactic autopsy, astronomers have used the Gemini South telescope in Chile to obtain a detailed spectrum of an echo of light from an ancient supernova that enables them to identify the original star's cause of death. Beyond confirming that the team's basic interpretation of the light echo was correct, the spectrum suggests strongly that the explosion was a Type-Ia supernova that originated with a compact white dwarf star in the Large Magellanic Cloud....

NASA -- Astronomers have discovered a planet orbiting a very young star nearly 100 light years away using a relatively small, publicly accessible telescope turbocharged with a new planet-finding instrument.The feat suggests that astronomers have found a way to dramatically accelerate the pace of the hunt for planets outside our solar system."In the last two decades, astronomers have searched about 3,000 stars for new planets," said Jian Ge, a professor of astronomy at the University...

NOAO -- New Spitzer Space Telescope observations of an unusual class of interacting binary stars detected excess amounts of infrared radiation, suggesting that these odd objects are surrounded by large disks of cool dust. The results reported today in Washington, DC, at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) were produced by one of six teams of professional astronomers and high school teachers participating in a unique program co-sponsored by the Spitzer Science Center...