Very Large Telescope celebrates 15 years of success

(Phys.org) —With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope—the world's most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted ...

Orion's hidden fiery ribbon

(Phys.org) —This dramatic new image of cosmic clouds in the constellation of Orion reveals what seems to be a fiery ribbon in the sky. This orange glow represents faint light coming from grains of cold interstellar dust, ...

Putting the stars within reach

When you look at the night sky, you see stars, a few planets, and perhaps even the Milky Way's spangled belt stretched across the middle.

A hidden treasure in the Large Magellanic Cloud

(Phys.org)—Nearly 200 000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse ...

SOFIA spots recent starburst in the Milky Way galaxy's center

(Phys.org)—Researchers using the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) have captured new images of a ring of gas and dust seven light-years in diameter surrounding the supermassive black hole at the center ...

The Herschel Space Observatory needs you

(Phys.org)—An astronomer from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) is leading a global study to help find holes in dust clouds.

A ghost in Cepheus

Described as a "dusty curtain" or "ghostly apparition," mysterious reflection nebula VdB 152 really is very faint. Far from your neighborhood on this Halloween Night, the cosmic phantom is nearly 1,400 light-years away.

The rich colors of a cosmic seagull (w/ video)

(Phys.org)—This new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory shows part of a stellar nursery nicknamed the Seagull Nebula. This cloud of gas, formally called Sharpless 2-292, seems to form the head of the seagull and glows ...

Hubble Catches Glowing Gas and Dark Dust in a Side-On Spiral

(Phys.org)—The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced a sharp image of NGC 4634, a spiral galaxy seen exactly side-on. Its disk is slightly warped by ongoing interactions with a nearby galaxy, and it is crisscrossed ...

Building blocks of life found around young star

(Phys.org)—A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has spotted sugar molecules in the gas surrounding a young Sun-like star. This is the first time sugar been found in space around ...

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