Monster galaxies lose their appetite with age

(Phys.org) —Our universe is filled with gobs of galaxies, bound together by gravity into larger families called clusters. Lying at the heart of most clusters is a monster galaxy thought to grow in size by merging with neighboring ...

New data help astronomers explore the hidden Milky Way

(Phys.org) —Today, astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey III, or SDSS-III – including University of Virginia astronomers – released a new online public data set featuring 60,000 stars that are helping to tell ...

Spiral Galaxy NGC 3627

(Phys.org) —The spiral galaxy NGC 3627 is located about 30 million light years from Earth. This composite image includes X-ray data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope ...

Cloud behavior expands habitable zone of alien planets

A new study that calculates the influence of cloud behavior on climate doubles the number of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. This finding means that in the ...

Final curtain for Europe's deep-space telescope

The deep-space telescope Herschel took its final bow on Monday, climaxing a successful four-year mission to observe the birth of stars and galaxies, the European Space Agency (ESA) said.

Hubble spots a very bright contortionist

(Phys.org) —The contorted object captured by Hubble in this picture is IRAS 22491-1808, also known as the South America Galaxy. It is an ultra-luminous infrared galaxy (ULIRG) that emits a huge amount of light at infrared ...

The diversity of distant galaxies

(Phys.org) —With the advent of powerful space infrared telescopes like the Spitzer Space Telescope and the (recently deceased) Herschel Space Telescope, astronomers have been able to study the properties of dust in galaxies ...

NGC 6334: A mini starburst region?

(Phys.org) —Stars are known to form in dense clouds of gas and dust, but why do some regions show prodigious rates of star formation, while others barely produce any young stars at all? Many of the richest sites are found ...

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