Newborn stars set ‘grand design’ spiral galaxy aglow in stunning new photo

The golden spiral arms of a distant galaxy sparkle in new images from the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The galaxy, known as NGC 4254 or Messier 99, is an example of a grand design spiral galaxy, which has prominent, well-defined spiral arms that wrap tightly around the galaxy’s center. Located 49 million light-years from Earth … Read more

Hubble Space Telescope spots eerie galaxy ‘eye’ staring across the universe

A new Hubble Space Telescope clearly captures the heart of a distant galaxy structured much like our own. The new image shows the “eye” of a galaxy called NGC 1097, which is located 48 million light-years away from Earth. NGC 1097 is a barred spiral galaxy, which puts it in the same category as the … Read more

What’s it like inside a massive galaxy cluster? Scientists used 196 lasers to find out.

An Earthbound experiment is replicating the extreme heat found in galaxy clusters located in deep space using nearly 200 lasers. The hope is the experiment series will reveal more about the conditions within giant groups of galaxies. Here, hydrogen gas can burn at roughly the same temperatures as it does the center of our sun, … Read more

New supernova identified in the weird Cartwheel galaxy

A new image from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) captures a stunning view of the Cartwheel galaxy following a recent stellar explosion.  Located roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Sculptor, the Cartwheel galaxy is a spiral galaxy that merged with a smaller neighboring galaxy several million years ago, resulting in its unusual, … Read more

Mysterious globular clusters could unlock the secrets of galaxy formation

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of “Ask a Spaceman” and “Space Radio,” and author of “How to Die in Space.” Globular clusters are like astronomical coelacanths — mysterious living fossils. These densely packed collections of ancient stars may hold the ultimate secrets to the formation of … Read more

Colossal Shock Wave Rippling Across Space Is Bigger Than Our Entire Galaxy

A billion years ago, an absolutely monstrous collision of two clusters of galaxies produced a pair of shock waves of absolutely epic proportions. Today, the structures gleam brightly in radio wavelengths, so huge they could easily engulf the Milky Way galaxy’s estimated 100,000 light-year diameter, stretching up to 6.5 million light-years through intergalactic space.   … Read more

Hubble telescope spots a ‘Space Triangle’ galaxy crash spawning new stars

A head-on collision between galaxies has created a vast, cosmic triangle in deep space glittering with star formation in a new image captured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The new photo, which NASA released Tuesday (Feb. 22), shows a pair of colliding galaxies known as called Arp 143 arranged in a what scientists described as … Read more

Astonishing Image Captures The Epic Collision of Three Galaxies

An object 681 million light-years away might look like one glorious, exquisite mess, but there’s a lot more going on that a first glance indicates. The object showcased in a new Hubble image – called IC 2431 – is not one galaxy, but three, coming together in a massive galactic merger that will one day … Read more

James Webb Space Telescope will do a galaxy deep dive into the dust

One of the James Webb Space Telescope‘s first studies will seek to tell us more about 19 nearby galaxies and how they fit into our neighborhood’s history. The infrared images taken from deep space will allow Webb’s data to add galactic information about star formation, strong winds blowing off these stars to disturb gas and … Read more

The Milky Way’s Dramatic History of Violence Has Been Charted in a New Map

Over the course of the history of the Universe, the Milky Way has not been serenely sailing through intergalactic space. Quite the contrary, actually. Over the last 13.6 billion years or so, it has collided with and consumed multiple other galaxies.   Now, through painstaking work, astronomers led by Khyati Malhan of the Max Planck … Read more