Hubble captures galaxy ESO 300-16

The galaxy ESO 300-16 looms over this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This galaxy, which lies 28.7 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus, is a ghostly assemblage of stars which resembles ...

Explainer: Light-years and units for the stars

"Space is Big. Really Big." The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pretty much nailed space with those five words. And space is so really big that our earthly measures of distance struggle.

New bright and blue supernova in NGC 1365

A very bright supernova has shown up NGC 1365, the galaxy also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, visible now for southern hemisphere observers. This already elegant galaxy lies about 56 million light-years away in ...

Twisted ring of gas orbits galactic center

The Herschel Space Observatory scanned the center of the galaxy in far-infrared and found a cool (in all senses of the word) twisting ring of rapidly orbiting gas clouds. The ring is estimated to have dimensions of 100 parsecs ...