Latest Starburst galaxy Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers presented research on Wednesday at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) about how the Cat's Paw Nebula is experiencing a "baby boom." The team said the nebula, or NGC 6334, is forming stars at a more rapid pace than the Orion Nebula, which is one of the closest stellar nurseries to Earth. "It might resemble a 'mini-starburst,' similar to a scaled-down version of the spectacular bursts sometimes seen in other...

John P. Millis, Ph.D. for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Stars are formed in massive clouds of gas that are being compressed by some nearby event. Over time, the region will be consumed by the forming stars, leaving a cluster that will eventually drift apart. But what starts this process in the first place? Often these regions of star formations -- known as starburst regions -- are found in distant galaxies where the activity level is very high. But this presents a problem:...

WATCH VIDEOS: [Animation of a Starburst Galaxy] | [Probing a Galactic Halo] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers writing in The Astrophysical Journal say they've observed how bursts of star formation have a major impact beyond the boundaries of their host galaxy. When galaxies form new stars, they can create frantic episodes of activity known as starbursts. Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope say these events can affect galactic gas at distances...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Astronomers say they have discovered a star factory in a galaxy so distant that they see it when the Universe was only six percent of its current age of about 13.7 billion years old. The team wrote in the journal Nature that HFLS3 sits at about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth. They said the distant galaxy is producing about 3,000 Suns per year, which is more than 2,000 times that of our own Milky Way galaxy. "This is the most...

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An international team of researchers announced it has found some of the Universe’s earliest starburst galaxies, essentially young energetic clusters of cosmic gas and dust that form stars at an alarming rate. The discoveries, which were detailed in reports published in Nature and the Astrophysical Journal, were made using the newly inaugurated Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope. In its first billions...

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...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online Shockwaves originating from the central starburst region of galaxy Messier 82 (M82) are most likely the source of bright clouds within a “cap” of gas clouds located some 40,000 light years away, astronomers have discovered. Kyoto University’s Dr. Kazuya Matsubayshi and an international team of colleagues observed the nearby starburst galaxy, which is located approximately 12 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa...

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports - Your Universe Online While searching for data looking for star-forming regions around a galaxy located more than 200 million light years away, researchers have accidentally discovered that it is, in fact, the largest known spiral galaxy in the entire universe. As reported Friday by BBC News reporter Jason Palmer, a research assistant from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and colleagues from the Catholic University of America (CUA), the University...

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers announced Dec. 12 they have seen further back in time than ever before and have uncovered a previously unseen population of seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 3 percent of its present age. The deepest images to date from Hubble yield the first statistically robust sample of galaxies that tells how abundant they were...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have taken a census of hundreds of previously unseen starburst galaxies, revealing high star-formation rates across the Universe. The team used the European Space Agency's Herschel space observatory and ground-based W. M. Keck Observatory to make the observation. Starburst galaxies give birth to hundreds of solar masses' worth of stars every year, while galaxies like our Milky Way produce only one Sun-like star per year....