What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named Westerhout 40 (W40), the butterfly is a nebula—a ...
Astronomy
Mar 27, 2019
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560
Researchers have detected a radio signal from abundant interstellar dust in MACS0416_Y1, a galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Standard models can't explain this much dust in a galaxy this ...
Astronomy
Mar 19, 2019
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125
Brown dwarfs are stars less massive than the sun and unable to burn hydrogen. They comprise (at least in mass) a bridge between planets and stars, and astronomers think that they form and evolve in ways different from either ...
Astronomy
Mar 4, 2019
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282
The Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) has participated in the discovery of a group of metal-poor stars shrouded in a large amount of iron dust situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud. This study involved a combination ...
Astronomy
Jan 24, 2019
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107
Astronomers have discovered a young star undergoing a rare growth spurt—giving a fascinating glimpse into the development of these distant stellar objects.
Astronomy
Dec 19, 2018
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269
In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as 'Oumuamua—the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system. The infrared Spitzer was one of many telescopes pointed ...
Astronomy
Nov 14, 2018
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664
This image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Cat's Paw Nebula, so named for the large, round features that create the impression of a feline footprint. The nebula is a star-forming region in the Milky Way galaxy, ...
Astronomy
Oct 24, 2018
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57
One year ago this week astronomers discovered an unusual object moving through space not too far from the Earth's orbit. In just a few days they realized it could not be a normal asteroid or comet – its path showed that ...
Space Exploration
Oct 22, 2018
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1138
Another NASA space telescope has shut down and halted science observations.
Astronomy
Oct 12, 2018
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1625
Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way Galaxy, is 100 times closer to us than any other SMBH and therefore a prime candidate for studies of how matter radiates as it accretes onto ...
Astronomy
Oct 8, 2018
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