The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It's also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes have shown us.
Astronomy
Dec 23, 2021
2
519
When two galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes at their cores release a devastating gravitational "kick," similar to the recoil from a shotgun. New research led by CU Boulder suggests that this kick may be so powerful ...
Astronomy
Nov 2, 2021
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4938
Astronomers have turned a cluster of galaxies into a gargantuan magnifying lens, using it to study another galaxy, 10.7 billion light years away, in unprecedented detail.
Astronomy
Jun 29, 2021
42
563
Recently, the eROSITA (extended Roentgen Survey with an Imaging Telescope Array) X-ray telescope, an instrument developed by a team of scientists at Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), has gained attention ...
Astronomy
May 25, 2021
0
13
This extraordinary image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the galaxy cluster Abell 2813 (also known as ACO 2813) has an almost delicate beauty, which also illustrates the remarkable physics at work within it. The ...
Astronomy
Apr 18, 2021
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4006
Once a black hole forms, its intense gravitational field produces a surface beyond which even light cannot escape, and it appears black to outsiders. All the details of the complex mix of matter and energy in its past are ...
Astronomy
Oct 15, 2020
166
26404
At present, the formation of galaxies is difficult to understand without the presence of a ubiquitous, but mysterious component, termed dark matter. Astronomers have measure how much dark matter there is around galaxies, ...
Astronomy
Oct 13, 2020
75
12620
Using high-powered telescopes including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, scientists from Canada, the United States and Denmark have captured the clearest image known of a cluster of galaxies from 10 billion years ago in a discovery ...
Astronomy
Jan 6, 2020
0
58
Billions of years ago, in the center of a galaxy cluster far, far away (15 billion light-years, to be exact), a black hole spewed out jets of plasma. As the plasma rushed out of the black hole, it pushed away material, creating ...
Astronomy
Dec 24, 2019
25
886
In space, black holes appear in different sizes and masses. The record is now held by a specimen in the Abell 85 cluster of galaxies, where an ultra-massive black hole with 40 billion times the mass of our sun sits in the ...
Astronomy
Dec 3, 2019
8
641
