Galaxies are gravitationally bound, large-scale astrophysical systems composed primarily of dark matter, stars, stellar remnants, gas, and dust, often embedded in extended dark matter halos. They exhibit diverse morphologies, including spiral, elliptical, and irregular types, and span mass scales from roughly 10⁷ to over 10¹² solar masses. Their internal dynamics are governed by gravity and angular momentum distribution, with baryonic components organized into disks, bulges, and halos, and frequently hosting central supermassive black holes. Galaxies are fundamental units of cosmic structure formation, participating in hierarchical assembly, mergers, and interactions within larger environments such as groups, clusters, and filaments of the cosmic web.
Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of massive galaxies, including our own Milky Way. Puzzlingly, supermassive black holes more than a billion times the mass of the sun appear to exist just a few hundred million ...
Astronomy
May 6, 2026
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An international team led by researchers at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has developed a new method that could significantly improve our understanding of the expansion of the universe ...
Astronomy
May 6, 2026
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A new paper from NASA's Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project announces that volunteers have essentially doubled the number of known brown dwarfs, with over 3,000 new discoveries made over the past 10 years since the project ...
Planetary Sciences
May 5, 2026
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An international team of astronomers has analyzed the data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to investigate giant molecular clouds in nearby galaxies. The new ...
The Milky Way galaxy grew into its current form with the help of smaller galaxies over time, which it has "consumed" or merged with. Astronomers are able to pick out which stars in the Milky Way came from other galaxies by ...
In this new image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, a spiral galaxy glittering with star clusters is the center of attention. NGC 3137 is located 53 million light-years away in the constellation Antlia (The Air Pump). ...
Astronomy
Apr 30, 2026
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A luminous swirl set against the deep black of space, the barred spiral galaxy IC 486 glows with a soft, ethereal light in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image from April 13, 2026.
Astronomy
Apr 30, 2026
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Astronomers, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), have confirmed the existence of a close quasar pair housed in a pair of merging galaxies seen when the universe was less than a billion years old, ...
A team of astrophysicists from Nanjing University and University of Bonn have demonstrated that, rather than being random, the mass of new stars born inside a star cluster is actually governed by a defined process of self-regulation. ...
Astronomy
Apr 24, 2026
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Messier 104, nicknamed the Sombrero Galaxy, is a popular target for amateur observing and astronomical research. Its recognizable extended halo, as well as a faint stellar stream, are captured in exquisite detail in this ...
Astronomy
Apr 24, 2026
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