Star formation is a major driver in galaxy evolution, right up there with the collisions and mergers that shape all galaxies. Researchers led by Ohio State University graduate student Debosmita Pathak, studied 18,000 star-forming regions in nearby spiral galaxies to get a better handle on the influence of starbirth.
Jupiter’s moon, Europa, has become high-value real estate for astrobiologists and the search for life beyond Earth. This is because the small moon, which is slightly smaller than Earth’s Moon, boasts a massive subsurface ocean of liquid water that scientists estimate contains about double the amount of water of all Earth’s oceans combined. As seen on Earth, water equals life, so scientists are eager to continue to explore Europa in any way possible to determine if it could harbor life as we know it, or even as we don’t know it.
This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image features a galaxy cluster, called CL0016+1609 or MACS J0018.5+1626, that is very bright at X-ray wavelengths and is one of the most extensively studied clusters at X-ray and radio wavelengths. The X-ray observations of this cluster revealed that it is two clusters merging along our line of sight.
Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have confirmed that two long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originated from the collapse of neutron stars into black holes.
The event horizon of a black hole should be impossible to study. It’s the point of no return, the boundary where gravity grows so strong that not even light can escape, so by definition nothing can carry word of it back to us. Yet a team of scientists have found a way to reach it and found a hidden signal, a faint trace, never read before, carrying information from the very edge of the horizon in the instant before it formed. From it they measured the new black hole's spin and surface gravity, and opened a fresh way to test whether Einstein's theory survives in the most extreme gravity there is.
Comets have play an interesting role in astronomy history. From antiquity, many cultures saw them omens or spirits, portending good or bad news for kings, queens, and emperors. Over the past few hundred years, however, astronomers have studied them intently to understand the science behind these visitors to the inner Solar System. Today we know that these ghostly apparitions in the sky are made of dirty balls of ice and rock blasting through space, scattering dust and gases as they go.
NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton may have found a supernova remnant near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. If confirmed as a supernova remnant, the ejected material is moving at about two million miles per hour and is about 1,700 years old.
