Star formation within interstellar clouds of gas and dust, so-called molecular clouds, proceeds very rapidly yet highly inefficiently. Most of the gas is dispersed by stellar radiation, revealing galaxies to be highly dynamic ...
Astronomy
May 23, 2019
1
310
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken a new look at the spectacular irregular galaxy NGC 4485, which has been warped and wound by its larger galactic neighbour. The gravity of the second galaxy has disrupted the ordered ...
Astronomy
May 16, 2019
2
657
Massive clusters of galaxies, some with more mass than a hundred Milky Way galaxies, have been detected from cosmic epochs as early as about three billion years after the big bang. Their ongoing star formation makes them ...
Astronomy
May 10, 2019
13
424
Several hundred million years after the Big Bang, the very first stars flared into the universe as massively bright accumulations of hydrogen and helium gas. Within the cores of these first stars, extreme, thermonuclear reactions ...
Astronomy
May 8, 2019
4
293
Small stellar systems like dwarf galaxies are thought to be the main building blocks of the Milky Way. However, it is unclear how many and what kind of stars in our galaxy originated from satellite dwarf galaxies.
Astronomy
Apr 30, 2019
1
283
How do galaxies form and evolve? And how do central supermassive black holes form in galaxies and influence their hosts? Those are two of the big questions that Tufts astronomers hope to answer when they start using a new, ...
Astronomy
Apr 23, 2019
3
59
The center of our galaxy is a frenzy of activity. A behemoth black hole—4 million times as massive as the sun—blasts out energy as it chows down on interstellar detritus while neighboring stars burst to life and subsequently ...
Astronomy
Mar 20, 2019
48
779
Researchers have detected a radio signal from abundant interstellar dust in MACS0416_Y1, a galaxy 13.2 billion light-years away in the constellation Eridanus. Standard models can't explain this much dust in a galaxy this ...
Astronomy
Mar 19, 2019
3
125
All massive galaxies are believed to host supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centers that grow by accreting mass from their environment. The current picture also imagines that the black holes grow in size as their host ...
Astronomy
Mar 18, 2019
0
170
The latest data release from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) includes observations revealing the internal structure and composition of nearly 5,000 nearby galaxies observed during the first three years of a program called ...
Astronomy
Jan 29, 2019
4
580
