First stars formed even later than previously thought

ESA's Planck satellite has revealed that the first stars in the Universe started forming later than previous observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background indicated. This new analysis also shows that these stars were the ...

Image: A mysterious ring of celestial microwaves

Fifty years ago, astronomers discovered a mystery. They called it Loop I. Today, we still have not fully resolved the mystery of how this giant celestial structure formed but we do now have the best image of it, thanks to ...

Image: The Magellanic Clouds and an interstellar filament

Portrayed in this image from ESA's Planck satellite are the two Magellanic Clouds, among the nearest companions of our Milky Way galaxy. The Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160 000 light-years away, is the large red and orange ...

Enormous hole in the universe may not be the only one

Astronomers have found evidence of a giant void that could be the largest known structure in the universe. The "supervoid" solves a controversial cosmic puzzle: it explains the origin of a large and anomalously cold region ...

Cosmic bumps on cosmic ripples

In 1969, the astrophysicists Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov Zel'dovich realized that the then recently discovered cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) would be distorted by hot cosmic gas. Hot electrons in the intergalactic ...

TRMM and GPM satellites measure rainfall rates in Typhoon Higos

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite and the Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM core satellites can calculate rainfall rates occurring in a storm from their orbits in space. TRMM and GPM both saw ...

Planck: Gravitational waves remain elusive

Despite earlier reports of a possible detection, a joint analysis of data from ESA's Planck satellite and the ground-based BICEP2 and Keck Array experiments has found no conclusive evidence of primordial gravitational waves.

Image: The magnetic field along the galactic plane

While the pastel tones and fine texture of this image may bring to mind brush strokes on an artist's canvas, they are in fact a visualisation of data from ESA's Planck satellite. The image portrays the interaction between ...

page 3 from 19