Feeding a galaxy's nuclear black hole

A galactic bar is the approximately linear structure of stars and gas that stretches across the inner regions of some galaxies. The bar stretches from one inner spiral arm, across the nuclear region, to an arm on the other ...

Mergers between galaxies trigger activity in their core

Active galactic nuclei (AGNs) play a major role in galaxy evolution. Astronomers from SRON and RuG have now used a record-setting sample of galaxies to confirm that galaxy mergers have a positive effect on igniting AGNs. ...

Spotting merging galaxies

Over 30 years ago, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite discovered that the universe contained many extremely luminous galaxies, some more than a thousand times brighter than our own Milky Way, but which are practically invisible ...

Why do some galactic unions lead to doom?

Three images from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope show pairs of galaxies on the cusp of cosmic consolidations. Though the galaxies appear separate now, gravity is pulling them together, and soon they will combine to form new, ...

Astronomers develop new tool to find merging galaxies

Today, at the 233rd AAS meeting in Seattle, astronomers from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) announce that they have developed a new tool to find otherwise-hidden galaxy mergers in data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies ...

'Missing' galactic mergers come to light with new technique

Galaxy mergers—in which two galaxies join together over billions of years in sometimes-dramatic bursts of light—aren't always easy for astronomers to spot. Now, scientists from the University of Colorado Boulder have ...

page 3 from 7