Space Telescopes News

July 10, 2016

Surprising Planet Has 3 Suns

Beating Heart of the Crab Nebula

Evidence for 'Direct Collapse' Black Hole

Water Clouds On Coldest Brown Dwarf

Latest Headlines

updated 12:41pm EDT

Accelerating Research Into Dark Energy

July 7, 2016 — A quick method for making accurate, virtual universes to help understand the effects of dark matter and dark energy has been developed by scientists. Making up 95 percent of our universe, these ... read more

Earth-Size Telescope Tracks the Aftermath of a Star Being Swallowed by a Supermassive Black Hole

July 6, 2016 — Radio astronomers have used a radio telescope network the size of the Earth to zoom in on a unique phenomenon in a distant ... read more

Let There Be Light: Super Bright Galaxies of the Early Universe

July 5, 2016 — Astronomers have shed further light on the evolution of the early Universe with the discovery of a "team" of super ... read more

Alma Finds a Swirling, Cool Jet That Reveals a Growing, Supermassive Black Hole

July 4, 2016 — Astronomers have made the surprising discovery of a jet of cool, dense gas in the center of a galaxy located 70 million ... read more

In the Blink of a Cosmic Eye: Chance Microlensing Events Probe Galactic Cores

June 30, 2016 — Some galaxies pump out vast amounts of energy from a very small volume of space, typically not much bigger than our own ... read more

Autolens Analysis Steps Up for Euclid’s 100,000 Strong Gravitational Lens Challenge

June 30, 2016 — Euclid satellite, due for launch in 2020, will set astronomers a huge challenge: to analyze one hundred thousand strong ... read more

Hubble Captures Vivid Auroras in Jupiter’s Atmosphere

June 30, 2016 — Astronomers are using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study auroras -- stunning light shows in a planet's atmosphere -- on the poles of the largest planet in the Solar ... read more

Space Team Discovers Universe Is Self-Cleaning

June 29, 2016 — Astronomers have released a catalog of the hidden universe, which reveals the unseen sources of energy found over the last 12 billion years of ... read more

Hubble Reveals Stellar Fireworks in 'Skyrocket' Galaxy

June 28, 2016 — A new Hubble Space Telescope image shows a firestorm of star birth lighting up one end of the diminutive galaxy Kiso 5639. The dwarf galaxy is shaped like a flattened ... read more

Astronomers Release Spectacular Survey of the Distant Universe

June 27, 2016 — Astronomers have released spectacular new infrared images of the distant Universe, providing the deepest view ever obtained over a large area ... read more

China Is About Ready To Look For Aliens After Relocating 9,000 Humans

China to Hunt for Alien Life With Giant Telescope

Imagine What Two Telescopes in Space Will See — If Hubble Doesn't Break

The Hubble Telescope Has Spotted The Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen

Teenagers on a Work Experience 'Discover' New Planet

July 1, 2016 — A group of teenagers on work experience at Keele University in Staffordshire, UK, may have discovered a new ... read more

Clandestine Black Hole May Represent New Population

June 28, 2016 — Astronomers have concluded that a peculiar source of radio waves thought to be a distant galaxy is actually a nearby binary star system containing a low-mass star and a black hole. This ... read more

Meet RobERt, the Dreaming Detective for Exoplanet Atmospheres

June 27, 2016 — Machine-learning techniques that mimic human recognition and dreaming processes are being deployed in the search for habitable worlds beyond our solar system. A deep belief neural network, called ... read more

Glorious, Glowing Jupiter Awaits Juno’s Arrival

June 27, 2016 — Stunning new images and the highest-resolution maps to date of Jupiter at thermal infrared wavelengths give a glowing view of Juno's target, a week ahead of the NASA mission's arrival at ... read more

Fastest-Spinning Brown-Dwarf Star Is Detected by Its Bursts of Radio Waves

June 27, 2016 — Astronomers have detected what may be the most rapidly rotating, ultra-cool, brown-dwarf star ever seen. The super-fast rotation period was measured by using the 305-meter Arecibo radio telescope -- ... read more

Detailed Plans for Largest Neutrino Telescope in the World

June 24, 2016 — A deep-sea array will soak up signals from neutrinos traveling through the cosmos to study the evolution of the universe and to discover more about the fundamental properties of these prized ... read more

Hubble Confirms New Dark Spot on Neptune

June 23, 2016 — New images confirm the presence of a dark vortex on Neptune. Though similar features were seen during the Voyager 2 flyby of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 1989 and by Hubble in 1994, this ... read more

Successful First Observations of Galactic Center With GRAVITY

June 23, 2016 — A European team of astronomers have used the new GRAVITY instrument at ESO's Very Large Telescope to obtain exciting observations of the center of the Milky Way by combining light from all four ... read more

The Universe: Learning About the Future from the Distant Past

June 22, 2016 — Our universe came to life nearly 14 billion years ago in the Big Bang -- a tremendously energetic fireball from which the cosmos has been expanding ever since. Today, space is filled with hundreds of ... read more

Astronomers Find the First 'Wind Nebula' Around a Magnetar

June 21, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered a vast cloud of high-energy particles called a wind nebula around a rare ultra-magnetic neutron star, or magnetar, for the first time. The find offers a unique window into ... read more

Newborn Giant Planet Grazes Its Star

June 20, 2016 — For the past 20 years, exoplanets known as 'hot Jupiters' have puzzled astronomers. These giant planets orbit 100 times closer to their host stars than Jupiter does to the Sun, which ... read more

NASA's K2 Finds Newborn Exoplanet Around Young Star

June 20, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered the youngest fully formed exoplanet ever detected. The newfound planet, K2-33b, is a bit larger than Neptune and whips tightly around its star every five days. It is only ... read more

Astrophysicists Release New Study of One of the First Stars

June 17, 2016 — A research team has used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on the Hubble Space Telescope to study key regions of the ultraviolet spectrum of a star thought to have been enriched by elements from one of ... read more

Unexpected Excess of Giant Planets in Star Cluster Messier 67

June 17, 2016 — Astronomers have found that there are far more planets of the hot Jupiter type than expected in a cluster of stars called Messier 67. This surprising result was obtained using a number of telescopes ... read more

CaSSIS Sends First Image of Mars

June 16, 2016 — The Mars Camera CaSSIS on the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter captured its first images of the Red Planet this week. The pictures are a part of the mission’s preparations for arriving at its destination ... read more

Small Planets Hiding in Giant Cloaks

June 14, 2016 — Hazes and clouds high up in the atmospheres of exoplanets may make them appear bigger than they really are, according to new ... read more

Life's First Handshake: Chiral Molecule Detected in Interstellar Space

June 14, 2016 — A team of scientists using highly sensitive radio telescopes has discovered the first complex organic chiral molecule in interstellar space. The molecule, propylene oxide (CH3CHOCH2), was found near ... read more

Researchers Gear Up Galaxy-Seeking Robots for a Test Run

June 13, 2016 — A prototype system that will test a planned array of 5,000 robots for a sky-mapping instrument is taking shape. Dubbed ProtoDESI, the scaled-down, 10-robot system will run through a series of tests ... read more

Writing Their Name in the Stars: Citizen Scientists Discover Huge Galaxy Cluster

June 13, 2016 — Two volunteer participants in an international citizen science project have had a rare galaxy cluster that they found named after ... read more

Failed Star Creates Its Own Spotlight in the Universe

June 13, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered an 'ultracool' brown dwarf known as 2MASS 0335+23 that can generate flares stronger than the ... read more

Friday, July 1, 2016