Galaxy mergers—in which two galaxies join together over billions of years in sometimes-dramatic bursts of light—aren’t always easy for astronomers to spot. Now, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a new technique for finding these cosmic couplings in surveys of the night sky.
Our solar system is just a tiny speck in the Milky Way.
Data from the Gaia satellite reveal 20 new high-speed stars, 13 of which appear to have originated outside of the Milky Way.
Astronomers have used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory to discover a ring of black holes or neutron stars in a galaxy 300 million light years from Earth.
A team of astronomers has discovered a new way to unlock the mysteries of how the first galaxies formed and evolved.
Astronomers have traced a high-energy neutrino to its cosmic source for the first time ever, solving a century-old mystery in the process.
All of this adds a new layer to the search for life on other planets: apart from finding planets in the “Goldilocks” area, where they are neither too far nor too close to their star….
Though it resembles a peaceful rose swirling in the darkness of the cosmos, NGC 3256 is actually the site of a violent clash. This distorted galaxy is the relic of a collision between two spiral galaxies, estimated to have occurred 500 million years ago. Today it is still reeling in the aftermath of this event.
Astronomers have discovered the beginnings of a gigantic “cosmic pileup” in the far reaches of the universe that has never been seen before and could form one of the largest structures in the cosmos.
A new survey precisely links the shape of a galaxy to the ages of its stars
