Latest Spiral galaxy Stories

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A detailed study of an enormous cloud of hot gas that envelops two large, colliding galaxies has been made using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. This oversized gas reservoir contains as much mass as 10 billion Suns, is 300,000 light years across, and radiates more than 7 million degrees Kelvin. Scientists call this sort of cloud a “halo.” This particular halo is located in the system designated NGC 6240, which astronomers...

WATCH VIDEO: [Gravitational Lensing of Distant Star-Forming Galaxies] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers reported in Nature and the Astrophysical Journal that starburst galaxies from early in the universe's history took place earlier than previously though. Scientists making observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope say they have found that the most vigorous bursts of star birth in the universe actually took...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) released an image this week of an interactive diagram known as the Hubble Tuning Fork. The diagram helps to describe the shape of galaxies, which can come in all different sizes. It ranges between elliptical galaxies, intermediate spirals, barred spirals and irregular shapes. The interactive map gives the examples of the different shapes of the galaxies, as well as a description in type, morphology,...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The intimate details of 100 galaxies in the local universe have been published by the Calar Alto Legacy Integral Field Area survey (CALIFA). The survey offers up new data, representing the first large-scale effort at "two plus one" mapping of galaxies. For every pixel within each two-dimensional image, scientists could perform a detailed analysis and provide information about dynamics and chemical composition. This information could...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, along with other observatories, has identified one of the lowest mass supermassive black holes ever observed in the middle of a galaxy that one would not expect to harbor this type of beast. This suggests that this black hole, while related to its supermassive cousins, may have a different origin. Located in the middle of the spiral galaxy NGC 4178, the black hole is shown in the image from the Sloan...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online While looking at one of the most distant quasars in the universe, astronomers were surprised to not see an underlying host galaxy of stars feeding it. NASA said the best explanation is that the galaxy is shrouded in so much dust that the stars are completely hidden everywhere. As stars aged and burned out in the early universe, they filled interstellar space with dust as they lost their atmosphere. The quasar dates back to an...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Researchers have found that less than half of Generation X adults can identify our own home in the universe, the spiral galaxy in which we reside. "Knowing your cosmic address is not a necessary job skill, but it is an important part of human knowledge about our universe and—to some extent—about ourselves," said Jon D. Miller, author of "The Generation X Report" and director of the Longitudinal Study of American Youth at the U-M...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online When massive galaxies belly-up to the interstellar buffet, their centers expand as they gobble up other galaxies that contain billions and billions of stars, according to a new report from University of Utah astronomers. "We found that during the last 6 billion years, the matter that makes up massive elliptical galaxies is getting more concentrated toward the centers of those galaxies. This is evidence that big galaxies are crashing...

NASA is lending the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, where the spacecraft will continue its exploration of the cosmos. In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, a Space Act Agreement was signed May 14 so the university soon can resume spacecraft operations and data management for the mission using private funds. "NASA sees this as an opportunity to allow the public to continue reaping the benefits from this space asset that NASA...

New instrument shows the gaseous halos of galaxies are much larger and more massive than the distribution of stars within the galaxy New, high-precision equipment orbiting Earth aboard the Hubble Space Telescope is now sending such rich data back to astronomers, some feel they are crossing the final frontier toward understanding galaxy evolution, says Todd Tripp, leader of the team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Galaxies are the birthplaces of stars, each with a dense,...