Not long after the Big Bang, the first generations of stars began altering the chemical make-up of primitive galaxies, slowly enriching the interstellar medium with basic elements such as oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen. Finding ...
Astronomy
May 16, 2018
88
551
The nuclei of most galaxies host supermassive black holes with millions or even billions of solar-masses of material. Material in the vicinity of such black holes can accrete onto a torus of dust and gas around the black ...
Astronomy
Apr 27, 2018
0
103
Next year marks the 20th anniversary of NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory launch into space. The Crab Nebula was one of the first objects that Chandra examined with its sharp X-ray vision, and it has been a frequent target ...
Astronomy
Mar 14, 2018
0
18
Much like detectives study fingerprints to identify the culprit, scientists used NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes to find the "fingerprints" of water in the atmosphere of a hot, bloated, Saturn-mass exoplanet some ...
Astronomy
Mar 1, 2018
6
1362
A series of four studies have shed new light on the properties of the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, currently our most optimal hope for evidence of biological life beyond the Solar system.
Astronomy
Feb 5, 2018
5
591
The hottest point on a gaseous planet near a distant star isn't where astrophysicists expected it to be - a discovery that challenges scientists' understanding of the many planets of this type found in solar systems outside ...
Astronomy
Jan 22, 2018
2
191
To have a full picture of the lives of massive stars, researchers need to study them in all stages – from when they're a mass of unformed gas and dust, to their often dynamic end-of-life explosions.
Astronomy
Jan 13, 2018
0
60
The path of a light beam will be bent by the presence of mass, an effect explained by General Relativity, and a massive body can therefore act like a lens - a so called "gravitational lens" – to distort the image of an ...
Astronomy
Dec 4, 2017
1
224
Astronomers at ANU have created the most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing secrets of how it formed and how it is likely to evolve.
Astronomy
Nov 28, 2017
0
45
Twice as big as Earth, the super-Earth 55 Cancri e was thought to have lava flows on its surface. The planet is so close to its star, the same side of the planet always faces the star, such that the planet has permanent day ...
Astronomy
Nov 16, 2017
0
226
