Celestial bauble intrigues astronomers

(PhysOrg.com) -- With the holiday season in full swing, a new image from an assembly of telescopes has revealed an unusual cosmic ornament. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton have been combined ...

Hot cores in dark clouds

(PhysOrg.com) -- The earliest stages in the life of a star are among the most mysterious. This is primarily because stars form inside dark clouds of material that block optical light, and because they form relatively quickly, ...

Telescopes help solve ancient supernova mystery

(PhysOrg.com) -- A mystery that began nearly 2,000 years ago, when Chinese astronomers witnessed what would turn out to be an exploding star in the sky, has been solved. New infrared observations from NASA's Spitzer Space ...

Galaxy caught blowing bubbles

(PhysOrg.com) -- Hubble's famous images of galaxies typically show elegant spirals or soft-edged ellipses. But these neat forms are only representative of large galaxies. Smaller galaxies like the dwarf irregular galaxy Holmberg ...

Are stellar explosions created equal?

Cosmic distances are difficult to grasp and no less difficult to measure. When it comes to other galaxies or even remote parts of our own Milky Way, distance measurements are nothing but assessments, derived from indirect ...

Twisted tale of our galaxy's ring

(PhysOrg.com) -- New observations from the Herschel Space Observatory show a bizarre, twisted ring of dense gas at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Only a few portions of the ring, which stretches across more than 600 ...

'Dead' galaxies are not so dead after all

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Michigan astronomers examined old galaxies and were surprised to discover that they are still making new stars. The results provide insights into how galaxies evolve with time.

Small bangs and white holes

Most gamma-ray bursts come in two flavors. Firstly, there are long duration bursts which form in dense star-forming regions and are associated with supernovae – which would understandably generate a sustained outburst ...

Studying a Star Before it is Born

(PhysOrg.com) -- The first phase of a star's formation are thought to begin deep inside a natal cloud of gas and dust. In the earliest stages, material coalesces under the influence of gravity into so-called "dense cores," ...

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