In the nearby Whirlpool galaxy and its companion galaxy, M51b, two supermassive black holes heat up and devour surrounding material. These two monsters should be the most luminous X-ray sources in sight, but a... more
An international team of more than 200 astronomers from 18 countries has published the first phase of a major new radio sky survey at unprecedented sensitivity using the... more
A new survey reveals hundreds of thousands of previously undetected galaxies, shedding new light on many research areas including the physics of black holes and how clusters of galaxies evolve. more
In the course of their life, open star clusters continuously lose stars to their surroundings. The resulting swath of tidal tails provides a glimpse... more
NASA has selected a new space mission that will help astronomers understand both how our universe evolved and how common are the ingredients for life in our galaxy's planetary systems. more
NASA has selected for development a mission that will perform a spectroscopic survey of the entire sky at near-infrared wavelengths to study the origins... more
U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao on Thursday pinned FAA Astronaut Wings on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo crewmembers, Test Pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky... more
The results are rolling in from Caltech's newest state-of-the-art sky-surveying camera, which began operations at the Palomar Observatory in March... more
British billionaire Richard Branson plans to travel to space within the next four or five months aboard his own Virgin Galactic spaceship, he told AFP Thursday. more
The hybrid rocket motor that powered Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo on its first flight into space will next be used to ignite public interest in the future of spaceflight as an artifact in... more
The United States now has two new certified Commercial Astronauts. Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo test pilots Mark "Forger" Stucky and Frederick "CJ" Sturckow were awarded Commercial Astronaut Wings by the Federal Aviation Administration... more
ESA's Gaia satellite has looked beyond our Galaxy and explored two nearby galaxies to reveal the stellar motions within them and how they will one day interact and collide with the Milky... more
The results are rolling in from Caltech's newest state-of-the-art sky-surveying camera, which began operations at the Palomar Observatory in March 2018. Called the Zwicky Transient Facility, or ZTF, the new instrument has... more
The first accurate 3D map of our galaxy reveals its true shape: warped and twisted. Astronomers from Macquarie University and the Chinese Academy of... more
Astronomers designed an astronomy workshop for students with hearing loss that can be easily used in classrooms, museums, fairs, and other public events. The workshop utilized a sound stage that... more
The Milky Way galaxy's disk of stars is anything but stable and flat. Instead, it becomes increasingly warped and twisted far away from the Milky Way's center, according to astronomers from National Astronomical Observatories of Chinese Academy of... more
Using European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have investigated the galaxy NGC 1365. The study, presented in a paper published January 18... more
The universe consists of a massive imbalance between matter and antimatter. Antimatter and matter are actually the same, but have opposite charges, but there's hardly any antimatter in the observable universe, including the stars and other... more
In December 2018, Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, visited Boston University to discuss funding opportunities with faculty and researchers. While on campus, he also gave a... more
Researchers have measured the strength of magnetic fields near two supermassive black holes at the centers of an important type of active galaxies. Surprisingly, the strengths of the magnetic fields do not appear sufficient... more
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have made an unexpected finding. They... more
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have discovered a dwarf galaxy in... more
Captured from the platform of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, located on Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, this... more
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have made an unexpected finding. They... more
For the past six years, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has been part of an international effort to create an unprecedented survey of distant galaxies and better... more
The latest data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) includes observations revealing the internal structure and composition of nearly 5,000 nearby galaxies observed during the first three years of a program called... more
The latest data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) includes observations revealing the internal structure and composition of nearly 5,000 nearby galaxies observed during... more
Investigating the history of our cosmos with a large sample of distant 'active' galaxies observed by ESA's XMM-Newton, a team of astronomers found there might be more to the early... more
Japanese astronomers report the identification of a new ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) as part of the search for far-infrared-bright but optically faint objects. The newly detected ULIRG, designated AKARI-FIS-V2 J0916248+073034, exhibits a... more
Russian astronomers have identified three new luminous blue variable (LBV) candidates in the star-forming galaxy NGC 4736. While one of the three newly found candidates was... more
Time to change your desktop pictures. The Hubble Space Telescope just produced an amazing panorama image of the Triangulum Galaxy, one of the closest galactic neighbors... more
A new telescope will take a sequence of hi-res snapshots with the world’s largest digital camera, covering the entire visible night sky every few... more
Suborbital spaceflight company Virgin Galactic laid off about 40 people earlier this month as part of a realignment of "skill sets" in the company's workforce as it prepares to shift... more
“Can moons have moons?” This simple question—asked by the four-year old son of Carnegie’s Juna Kollmeier—started it all. Not long after this initial bedtime query, Kollmeier was coordinating... more
The founder of Virgin Galactic says he now expects to fly on the company’s SpaceShipTwo suborbital vehicle around the middle of this year after a series... more
Under Armour will design the gear worn by passengers and pilots on Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceflights, representatives of both companies announced today (Jan. 24). more
It has taken researchers at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias almost three years to produce the deepest image of the universe ever taken from space, by recovering a large quantity of "lost" light... more
It has taken researchers almost three years to produce the deepest image of the Universe ever taken from space, by recovering a large quantity of 'lost' light around the largest galaxies in the Hubble... more
It has taken researchers almost three years to produce the deepest image of the Universe ever taken from space, by recovering a large quantity of 'lost' light around the largest galaxies in the HUDF. more
Almost 20 years ago, the DAMA/LIBRA experiment at Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory—LNGS began publishing data showing that it had detected a signal modulation produced by an interaction... more