Astronomers map interstellar dust grains in Milky Way

Between the stars in our Milky Way, vast amounts of tiny dust grains are floating aimlessly around. They form the building blocks of new stars and planets. But we still don't know what elements exactly are available to form ...

Merging galaxies have enshrouded black holes

Black holes get a bad rap in popular culture for swallowing everything in their environments. In reality, stars, gas and dust can orbit black holes for long periods of time, until a major disruption pushes the material in.

Light echo helps researchers map out parts of galaxy

Thousands of years before humans invented agriculture, a bright burst of X-rays left the dense neutron star Circinus X-1, located in the faint Southern constellation Circinus. A year and a half ago, those X-rays were detected ...

Planck: Gravitational waves remain elusive

Despite earlier reports of a possible detection, a joint analysis of data from ESA's Planck satellite and the ground-based BICEP2 and Keck Array experiments has found no conclusive evidence of primordial gravitational waves.

Image: A Hubble sweep of the dust filaments of NGC 4217

In this image the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope takes a close look at the spiral galaxy NGC 4217, located 60 million light-years away from Earth. The galaxy is seen almost perfectly edge on and is a perfect candidate for ...

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