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 ...

Very Large Telescope celebrates 15 years of success

(Phys.org) —With this new view of a spectacular stellar nursery ESO is celebrating 15 years of the Very Large Telescope—the world's most advanced optical instrument. This picture reveals thick clumps of dust silhouetted ...

Abell 30: X-rays from a Reborn Planetary Nebula

(Phys.org)—These images of the planetary nebula Abell 30, (a.k.a. A30), show one of the clearest views ever obtained of a special phase of evolution for these objects. The inset image on the right is a close-up view of ...

A new class of extragalactic objects

A blazar is a galaxy with an intensely bright central nucleus containing a supermassive black hole, much like a quasar. The difference is that a blazar can emit light with extremely high energy gamma rays that are sometimes ...

A black widow's Tango Mortale in gamma-ray light

Pulsars are the compact remnants from explosions of massive stars. Some of them spin around their own axis hundreds of times per second, emitting beams of radiation into space. Until now, they could only be found through ...

Twists and turns in interacting galaxies

(Phys.org)—Almost thirty years ago the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS, discovered that the universe contained many fabulously luminous galaxies, some of them more than a thousand times brighter than our own galaxy, ...

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