NASA unveils first images from revamped HubbleSeptember 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - NASA scientists Wednesday unveiled the first images taken by a revamped Hubble telescope, providing even crisper pictures of distant stars and galaxies. The colourful images provide a taste of the Hubble's new capability after a servicing mission in May that installed new instruments and repaired broken ones that had hampered the world's most famous telescope.
Cosmic collision in our neighbourhood changed galaxiesSeptember 4th, 2009 TORONTO - Andromeda and Triangulum, the two galaxies closest to our own, collided two to three billion years ago, changing the galactic structure, according to evidence unearthed by astronomers. The collision appears to have plucked millions of stars from the Triangulum disk to form a faint stream visible in the Pan-Andromeda Archaeological Survey (PAndAS) data, says Larry Widrow, professor of physics and Astronomy at Queen's University.
Astronomers detect hyperactive galaxies by looking back 11 bln yrs into the pastAugust 6th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Looking almost 11 billion years into the past, astronomers have measured the motions of stars for the first time in a very distant galaxy and clocked speeds upwards of one million miles per hour, about twice the speed of our Sun through the Milky Way. The fast-moving stars shed new light on how these distant galaxies, which are a fraction the size of our Milky Way, may have evolved into the full-grown galaxies seen around us today.
Dancing helps galaxies lose weight!July 30th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In an interesting new research, astronomers have determined that dwarf spheroidal galaxies, which contain few stars relative to their total mass, are formed by indulging in a cosmic dance. Dwarf spheroidal galaxies appear to be made mostly of dark matter - a mysterious substance detectable only by its gravitational influence, which outweighs normal matter by a factor of five to one in the universe as a whole.
Astronomers see high-speed galaxy collision in actionJuly 10th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers at the Chandra X-ray Observatory have spotted a galaxy collision in action, with one galaxy passing through the core of other galaxies at almost 2 million miles per hour. The image obtained is of Stephan's Quintet, a compact group of galaxies discovered about 130 years ago and located about 280 million light years from Earth.
Largest ever survey of very distant galaxy clusters completedJuly 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of researchers led by a UC (University of California) Riverside astronomer has completed the largest ever survey designed to find very distant clusters of galaxies. Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations from the CTIO 4m and CFHT 3.6m telescopes, combined with Spitzer Space Telescope infrared observations.
Weird space blobs turn out to be adolescent galaxies throwing final tantrum before growing upJune 24th, 2009 Telescope finds space blobs are pubescent galaxiesWASHINGTON — Mysterious space blobs aren't infant galaxies as astronomers once thought. Scientists say they mostly consist of galaxies going through puberty, all hot and bothered.
Unique sky survey to reveal new classes of astronomical objectsJune 16th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An innovative sky survey has begun returning images that will be used to detect unprecedented numbers of powerful cosmic explosions called supernovae in distant galaxies, variable brightness stars in our own Milky Way, and reveal new classes of astronomical objects. All of these discoveries will stem from the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey, which combines, in a new way, the power of a wide-field telescope, a high-resolution camera, and high-performance networking and computing, with rapid follow-up by telescopes around the globe, to open windows of discovery for astronomers.
'Cosmic cannonballs' spotted by astronomers in early UniverseJune 10th, 2009 LONDON - Astronomers have detected evidence of a new clutch of tiny, dense galaxies, dubbed 'cosmic cannonballs', which thrived in the early Universe, and are nowhere to be seen today. According to a report in New Scientist, the ultra-dense galaxies, which were already full of old stars when the universe was less than 3 billion years old, were first reported in 2008.
Astronomers discover most dark gamma-ray bursts occur in normal galaxiesJune 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of astronomers has found most dark gamma-ray bursts occur in normal galaxies detectable by large, ground-based optical telescopes. Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's biggest explosions, capable of producing so much light that ground-based telescopes easily detect it billions of light-years away.
Black hole discovered to be 3 times more massive than previously thoughtJune 9th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have used new computer modeling techniques to discover that the black hole at the heart of M87, one the largest nearby giant galaxies, is two to three times more massive than previously thought. The astronomers were Karl Gebhardt from the University of Texas at Austin and Jens Thomas from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany.
Starbursts in dwarf galaxies last 100 times longer than astronomers thoughtMay 1st, 2009 WASHINGTON - An analysis of archival images of small, or dwarf, galaxies taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope suggests that starbursts, intense regions of star formation, sweep across the whole galaxy and last 100 times longer than astronomers thought. The longer duration may affect how dwarf galaxies change over time, and therefore may shed light on galaxy evolution.
Giant galaxies born 6-7 billion years earlier than expectedApril 24th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Astronomers have discovered large galaxies that have not changed much in size for the last 9 billion years, which suggests these cosmic giants were born 6-7 billion years earlier than expected. The most popular model for galaxy formation is a bottom-up or hierarchical model in which small galaxies gradually develop into larger ones over a long period of time.
Discovery of recently formed galaxies poses challenge to galaxy formation theoriesApril 11th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of astronomers has found a sample of massive galaxies with properties that suggest they may have formed relatively recently, a discovery that poses challenge to galaxy formation theories. This runs counter to the widely-held belief that massive, luminous galaxies (like our own Milky Way Galaxy) began their formation and evolution shortly after the Big Bang, some 13 billion years ago.
Hubble provides new evidence for dark matter around small galaxiesMarch 13th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a strong new line of evidence that halos of dark matter are embedded around small galaxies. Looking into the turbulent center of the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster, Hubble discovered a large population of small galaxies that have remained intact while larger galaxies around them are being ripped apart by the gravitational tug of other galaxies.
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