Isaac Newton formulated his theory of gravity as an action at a distance: a planet instantly feels the influence of another celestial body, no matter the distance between them. This characteristic motivated Albert Einstein ...
Astronomy
Jun 27, 2023
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Using the James Webb Space Telescope to look back in time at the early universe, astronomers discovered a surprise: a cluster of galaxies merging together around a rare red quasar within a massive black hole. The findings ...
Astronomy
Oct 20, 2022
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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
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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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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
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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
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641
Supermassive black holes, weighing millions or even billions of times our Sun's mass, are still only a tiny fraction of the mass of the galaxies they inhabit. But in some cases, the central black hole is the tail wagging ...
Astronomy
Nov 19, 2019
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240
When it comes to making new stars, the party is almost over in the present-day universe. In fact, it's been nearly over for billions of years. Our Milky Way continues to form the equivalent of one Sun every year. But in the ...
Astronomy
Aug 22, 2019
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744
Using high-resolution adaptive optics imaging from the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have uncovered one of the oldest star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The remarkably sharp image looks back into the early history of ...
Astronomy
Mar 21, 2019
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Most galaxies lie in clusters, groupings of a few to many thousands of galaxies. Our Milky Way galaxy itself is a member of the "Local Group," a band of about fifty galaxies whose other large member is the Andromeda Galaxy ...
Astronomy
Nov 28, 2014
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