The survivors of a 13 billion year old massacre

(PhysOrg.com) -- Our Milky Way galaxy is surrounded by some 200 compact groups of stars, containing up to a million stars each. At 13 billion years of age, these globular clusters are almost as old as the universe itself ...

Black hole jets

(PhysOrg.com) -- Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes (equal to millions or even billions of solar ...

A universal law for star formation

(PhysOrg.com) -- Star formation is studied by astronomers not only because it produces new stars and planetary systems. It also generates copious amounts of ultraviolet light that heats dust which in turn causes the birth ...

Planets smashed into dust near supermassive black holes

(PhysOrg.com) -- Fat doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that obscure about half of supermassive black holes could be the result of high speed crashes between planets and asteroids, according to a new theory from an international ...

VLT looks into the eyes of the virgin

(PhysOrg.com) -- ESO's Very Large Telescope has taken a striking image of a beautiful yet peculiar pair of galaxies nicknamed The Eyes. The larger of these, NGC 4438, was once a spiral galaxy but has become badly deformed ...

Spitzer photo atlas of galaxy 'train wrecks'

(PhysOrg.com) -- Five billion years from now, our Milky Way Galaxy will collide with the Andromeda Galaxy. This will mark a moment of both destruction and creation. The galaxies will lose their separate identities as they ...

Atoms-for-Peace: A galactic collision in action (w/ Video)

(PhysOrg.com) -- European Southern Observatory astronomers have produced a spectacular new image of the famous Atoms-for-Peace galaxy (NGC 7252). This galactic pile-up, formed by the collision of two galaxies, provides an ...

Intense Star Formation in the Early Universe

(PhysOrg.com) -- Distant galaxies are not only far away in space. Because it takes time for their light to reach us, they are also very far away in time -- snapshots from the distant past.

Image: Hubble captures a monster merger

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features Arp 122, a peculiar galaxy that in fact comprises two galaxies—NGC 6040, the tilted, warped spiral galaxy and LEDA 59642, the round, face-on spiral—that are in the midst ...

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