Galaxy's Ring of Fire

Johnny Cash may have preferred this galaxy's burning ring of fire to the one he sang about falling into in his popular song. The "starburst ring" seen at center in red and yellow hues is not the product of love, as in the ...

NASA develops key to cosmic carbon's molecular evolution

(Phys.org) —Scientists at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., now have the capability to systematically investigate the molecular evolution of cosmic carbon. For the first time, these scientists are able ...

Sifting through the atmospheres of far-off worlds

(Phys.org) —Gone are the days of being able to count the number of known planets on your fingers. Today, there are more than 800 confirmed exoplanets—planets that orbit stars beyond our sun—and more than 2,700 other ...

Thermal shield testing on Webb's MIRI

(Phys.org) —NASA engineer Acey Herrera recently checked out copper test wires inside the thermal shield of the Mid-Infrared Instrument, known as MIRI, that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. The shield is ...

Herschel telescope bows out after successful mission

Europe's deep-space Herschel telescope has given up the ghost—running out of coolant after a successful mission to observe the birth of stars and galaxies, the European Space Agency said Monday.

Rare galaxy found furiously burning fuel for stars

Astronomers have found a galaxy turning gas into stars with almost 100 percent efficiency, a rare phase of galaxy evolution that is the most extreme yet observed. The findings come from the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer ...

A fresh take on the Horsehead Nebula

(Phys.org) —To celebrate its 23rd year in orbit, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has released a stunning new image of one of the most distinctive objects in our skies: the Horsehead Nebula. This image shows the nebula ...

The distant cosmos as seen in the infrared

(Phys.org) —At some stage after its birth in the big bang, the universe began to make galaxies. No one knows exactly when, or how, this occurred. For that matter, astronomers do not know how the lineages of our own Milky ...

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