How the Universe escaped its 'dark ages'

(Phys.org) -- An international team of astronomers have uncovered an important clue about how the Universe emerged from its ‘dark ages’ some 13 billion years ago. By looking at nearby galaxies, they can infer what ...

Spitzer telescope finds first objects burned furiously

(Phys.org) -- The faint, lumpy glow given off by the very first objects in the universe may have been detected with the best precision yet, using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. These faint objects might be wildly massive ...

Penn astrophysicists zero in on gravity theory

(Phys.org) -- Most people take gravity for granted. But for University of Pennsylvania astrophysicist Bhuvnesh Jain, the nature of gravity is the question of a lifetime. As scientists have been able to see farther and deeper ...

The JCMT celebrates 25 years on top of the world

The James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, is celebrating its 25th birthday this week. It first turned its dish to the heavens this week in 1987, and now, a quarter of a century later, the JCMT continues ...

Most elliptical galaxies are 'like spirals'

(PhysOrg.com) -- The majority of 'elliptical' galaxies are not spherical but disc-shaped, resembling spiral galaxies such as our own Milky Way with the gas and dust removed, new observations suggest.

X-ray discovery points to location of missing matter

Using observations with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA's XMM-Newton, astronomers have announced a robust detection of a vast reservoir of intergalactic gas about 400 million light years from Earth. This discovery ...

NASA's Roman Space Telescope to investigate galactic fossils

The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, ...

Hubble measures the distance to a supernova

Measuring the distance to truly remote objects like galaxies, quasars, and galaxy clusters is a crucial task in astrophysics, particularly when it comes to studying the early universe, but it's a difficult one to complete.

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