Guiding our search for life on other earths

A telescope will soon allow astronomers to probe the atmosphere of Earthlike exoplanets for signs of life. To prepare, Lisa Kaltenegger and her team are modeling the atmospheric fingerprints for hundreds of potential alien ...

An infrared atlas of interacting galaxies

Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, have been influenced by an interaction with another galaxy at some time in their past. Interactions between galaxies can trigger an increase in star-formation activity as well an ...

The tell-tale signs of a galactic merger

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this striking view of spiral galaxy NGC 7714. This galaxy has drifted too close to another nearby galaxy and the dramatic interaction has twisted its spiral arms out of shape, ...

Hubble spies charming spiral galaxy bursting with stars

(Phys.org) —The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope observes some of the most beautiful galaxies in our skies—spirals sparkling with bright stellar nurseries, violent duos ripping gas and stars away from one another as they ...

First light for SPHERE exoplanet imager

SPHERE—the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch instrument—has been installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. This powerful facility for studying exoplanets uses multiple ...

Space sunflower may help snap pictures of planets

A spacecraft that looks like a giant sunflower might one day be used to acquire images of Earth-like rocky planets around nearby stars. The prototype deployable structure, called a starshade, is being developed by NASA's ...

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