Image: Our flocculent neighbour, the spiral galaxy M33

The spiral galaxy M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, is one of our closest cosmic neighbours, just three million light-years away. Home to some forty billion stars, it is the third largest in the Local Group of galaxies ...

Organic conundrum in Large Magellanic Cloud

(Phys.org) —A group of organic chemicals that are considered carcinogens and pollutants today on Earth, but are also thought to be the building blocks for the origins of life, may hold clues to how carbon-rich chemicals ...

Violent birth announcement from an infant star

(Phys.org) —This Hubble image shows IRAS 14568-6304, a young star that is cloaked in a haze of golden gas and dust. It appears to be embedded within an intriguing swoosh of dark sky, which curves through the image and obscures ...

Image: Glowing jewels in the galactic plane

The majority of the stars in our Galaxy, the Milky Way, reside in a single huge disc, known as the Galactic Plane, spanning 100 000 light-years across. The Sun also resides in this crowded stellar hub, lying roughly halfway ...

Sakurai's Object: Stellar evolution in real time

(Phys.org) —Stellar lifetimes are measured in billions of years, so changes in their appearance rarely take place on a human timescale. Thus an opportunity to observe a star passing from one stage of life to another on ...

Black hole makes 'String of Pearls' clusters

(Phys.org) —Huge young star clusters resembling a string of pearls around a black hole in the centre of a galaxy 120 million light-years away have been discovered by researchers at Swinburne University of Technology.

Astronomers complete cosmic dust census

An international team of astronomers has completed a benchmark study of more than 300 galaxies, producing the largest census of dust in the local Universe, the Herschel Reference Survey. Led by Dr Luca Cortese from Swinburne ...

Image: Star factory NGC 7538

(Phys.org) —The billowing clouds portrayed in this image from ESA's Herschel observatory are part of NGC 7538, a stellar nursery for massive stars. Located around 9000 light-years away, this is one of the few regions of ...

ALMA discovers a formation site of a giant planetary system

A team of Japanese astronomers has obtained a firm evidence of formatino of a giant planetary system around a young star by the observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). This result has a ...

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