A celestial witch's broom?—A new view of the pencil nebula

(Phys.org)—The Pencil Nebula is pictured in a new image from ESO's La Silla Observatory in Chile. This peculiar cloud of glowing gas is part of a huge ring of wreckage left over after a supernova explosion that took place ...

Fingering the culprit that polluted the Solar System

(Phys.org) -- For decades it has been thought that a shock wave from a supernova explosion triggered the formation of our Solar System. According to this theory, the shock wave also injected material from the exploding star ...

Star explosion leaves behind a rose

(PhysOrg.com) -- About 3,700 years ago, people on Earth would have seen a brand-new bright star in the sky. It slowly dimmed out of sight and was eventually forgotten, until modern astronomers later found its remains, called ...

WISE sees an explosion of infrared light

(PhysOrg.com) -- A circular rainbow appears like a halo around an exploded star in this new view of the IC 443 nebula from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.

Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust: Chandra/Spitzer Image

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new image from NASA's Chandra and Spitzer space telescopes shows the dusty remains of a collapsed star. The dust is flying past and engulfing a nearby family of stars.

A Galaxy Collision in Action

This beautiful image gives a new look at Stephan's Quintet, a compact group of galaxies discovered about 130 years ago and located about 280 million light years from Earth. The curved, light blue ridge running down the center ...

A Super-Efficient Particle Accelerator

This image of data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope shows a part of the roughly circular supernova remnant known as RCW 86.

Giant balloon flying high over Atlantic to catch cosmic rays

(PhysOrg.com) -- University of Delaware researchers in Sweden have launched a giant balloon taller than a football field that is now flying at the edge of space to collect data on cosmic rays -- the most super-charged particles ...

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