What is dark energy? Inside our accelerating, expanding universe

Some 13.8 billion years ago, the universe began with a rapid expansion we call the Big Bang. After this initial expansion, which lasted a fraction of a second, gravity started to slow the universe down. But the cosmos wouldn't ...

VISTA stares right through the Milky Way

A new image taken with ESO's VISTA survey telescope reveals the Trifid Nebula in a new light. By observing in infrared light, astronomers can see right through the central parts of the Milky Way and spot many previously hidden ...

Astronomers clash over the distance to the famed North Star

(Phys.org)—The North Star (Polaris) has played an important role in human history, yet knowledge of its fundamental parameters is unsatisfactory. That problem is attributable in large part to uncertainties tied to the star's ...

Astronomers rule out one explanation for the Hubble tension

Perhaps the greatest and most frustrating mystery in cosmology is the Hubble tension problem. Put simply, all the observational evidence we have points to a universe that began in a hot, dense state, and then expanded at ...

Astronomers refine measurement of distance to nearest galaxy

A team of astronomers including Carnegie's Ian Thompson have managed to improve the measurement of the distance to our nearest neighbor galaxy and, in the process, refine an astronomical calculation that helps measure the ...

Researchers report long hidden properties of Polaris

Two Villanova University astrophysics professors led a research team that has discovered the long hidden physical properties of Polaris, popularly known as "The North Star." Until now, scientists' wide-ranging estimates of ...

Cosmology standard candle not so standard after all

(PhysOrg.com) -- Astronomers have turned up the first direct proof that "standard candles" used to illuminate the size of the universe, termed Cepheids, shrink in mass, making them not quite as standard as once thought. The ...

VISTA discovers new component of Milky Way

Astronomers using the VISTA telescope at ESO's Paranal Observatory have discovered a previously unknown component of the Milky Way. By mapping out the locations of a class of stars that vary in brightness called Cepheids, ...

Pulsating star mystery solved

(PhysOrg.com) -- By discovering the first double star where a pulsating Cepheid variable and another star pass in front of one another, an international team of astronomers has solved a decades-old mystery. The rare alignment ...

'Standard candles' illuminate the far side of the Milky Way

South African astronomers have discovered the very first known stars in the flared disk of our Milky Way Galaxy. These stars are situated on the far side of our Galaxy, 80 thousand light years from the Earth and beyond the ...

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