Galaxies News

September 9, 2016

Hundreds of Undiscovered Black Holes Revealed

Rare Fossil Relic of Early Milky Way

Reconciling Dwarf Galaxies With Dark Matter

First Gravitational Waves Form Quickly

Latest Headlines

updated 12:40am EDT

Detailed Age Map Shows How Milky Way Came Together

Sep. 6, 2016 — Using colors to identify the approximate ages of more than 130,000 stars in the Milky Way's halo, astronomers have produced the clearest picture yet of how the galaxy formed more than 13.5 billion ... read more

The Rise and Fall of Galaxy Formation

Aug. 30, 2016 — Astronomers have charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. The FourStar Galaxy Evolution Survey has built a multicolored photo album of ... read more

Milky Way Had a Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago

Aug. 29, 2016 — The center of the Milky Way galaxy is currently a quiet place where a supermassive black hole slumbers, only occasionally slurping small sips of hydrogen gas. But it wasn't ... read more

Scientists Discover a ‘dark’ Milky Way

Aug. 26, 2016 — Using the world's most powerful telescopes, an international team of astronomers has found a massive galaxy that consists almost entirely of ... read more

Cosmic Neighbors Inhibit Star Formation, Even in the Early Universe

Aug. 24, 2016 — Researchers have discovered four of the most distant clusters of galaxies ever found, as they appeared when the universe was only 4 billion years old. This sample is now ... read more

NASA's Fermi Mission Expands Its Search for Dark Matter

Aug. 12, 2016 — Dark matter, the mysterious stuff that makes up most of the material universe, continues to vex scientists, but three creative studies using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have helped whittle ... read more

Ten Trillionths of Your Suntan Comes from Beyond Our Galaxy

Aug. 11, 2016 — Astronomers have accurately measured the light hitting the Earth from outside our galaxy and determined that 10 trillionths of your suntan comes from beyond ... read more

Hubble Uncovers a Galaxy Pair Coming in from the Wilderness

Aug. 11, 2016 — Two tiny dwarf galaxies have been observed that have wandered from a vast cosmic wilderness into a nearby 'big city' packed with galaxies. After being quiescent for billions ... read more

Astronomers Make First Accurate Measurement of Oxygen in Distant Galaxy

Aug. 3, 2016 — Astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of the abundance of oxygen in a distant galaxy, essentially looking back in time at this galaxy as it appeared 12 billion ... read more

A Giant Stellar Void in the Milky Way

Aug. 1, 2016 — A major revision is required in our understanding of our Milky Way Galaxy according to an international team. Astronomers have found that there is a huge region around the ... read more

The First Star-Visiting Probe Will Need Some Ambitious Engineering

Building NASA's Rocket Fuel Tank in 60 Seconds

Virgin Galactic That Much Closer to Passenger Lift-Off

There Are A LOT More Galaxies Than We Previously Thought Existed

Astronomers Uncover Hidden Stellar Birthplace

July 27, 2016 — Astronomers have uncovered a hidden stellar birthplace in a nearby spiral galaxy, using a telescope in Chile. The results show that the speed of star formation in the center of the galaxy - and other ... read more

A Famous Supermassive Black Hole 'Spied On' With the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS

July 26, 2016 — Novel observations by an international group of researchers with the CanariCam instrument on the Gran Telescopio CANARIAS provide new information about magnetic fields around the active nucleus of ... read more

Ancient Eye in the Sky

July 26, 2016 — Light from a distant galaxy can be strongly bent by the gravitational influence of a foreground galaxy. That effect is called strong gravitational lensing. Normally a single galaxy is lensed at a ... read more

Astronomers Discover Dizzying Spin of the Milky Way Galaxy's 'Halo'

July 25, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered for the first time that the hot gas in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy is spinning in the same direction and at comparable speed as the galaxy's disk, which contains ... read more

Space... the Final Frontier

July 21, 2016 — Fifty years ago Captain Kirk and the crew of the starship Enterprise began their journey into space -- the final frontier. Now, as the newest Star Trek film hits cinemas, the NASA/ESA Hubble space ... read more

X Marks the Spot at the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy

July 19, 2016 — Two astronomers -- with the help of Twitter--have uncovered the strongest evidence yet that an enormous X-shaped structure made of stars lies within the central bulge of the Milky Way ... read more

'Frankenstein' Galaxy Surprises Astronomers

July 12, 2016 — About 250 million light-years away, there's a neighborhood of our universe that astronomers had considered quiet and unremarkable. But now, scientists have uncovered an enormous, bizarre galaxy ... read more

Blue Is an Indicator of First Star's Supernova Explosions: More Than 13 Billion Years Old

July 12, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered that the color of supernovae during a specific phase could be an indicator for detecting the most distant and oldest supernovae in the Universe -- more than 13 billion ... read more

Study Explains Why Galaxies Stop Creating Stars

July 8, 2016 — Using a large sample of around 70,000 galaxies, a team of researchers led by University of California, Riverside astronomers may have an answer to an outstanding problem in the study of the evolution ... read more

Astronomers Find Evidence for ‘direct Collapse’ Black Hole

July 7, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered evidence for an unusual kind of black hole born extremely early in the universe. They showed that a recently discovered unusual source of intense radiation is likely ... read more

A New Look at the Galaxy-Shaping Power of Black Holes

July 6, 2016 — Data from a now-defunct satellite is providing new insights into the complex tug-of-war between galaxies, the hot plasma that surrounds them, and the giant black holes that lurk in their centers. The ... 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 bright ... 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 light years from Earth. The jet, with its unusual, swirling structure, gives ... read more

Spiderweb Galaxy: Watery Dew Drops Surrounding Dusty Spider’s Web

July 1, 2016 — Astronomers have spotted glowing droplets of condensed water in the distant Spiderweb Galaxy -- but not where they expected to find them. Detections show that the water is located far out in the ... 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 solar system. The cores of these galaxies, so called Active Galactic Nuclei or ... read more

Gravitational Lens Zooms in on Why Some Quasars Have the Radio Turned Down

June 30, 2016 — Mini-jets of material ejected from a central supermassive black hole appear to be the culprits behind faint radio wave emissions in ‘radio-quiet’ quasars. A study of gravitationally-lensed images ... 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 gravitational lenses. The gravitational deflection of light from distant ... read more

It's Not Easy Being Green: What Colors Tell Us About Galaxy Evolution

June 29, 2016 — Scientists may have answered why green galaxies are rare in our universe and why their color could reveal a troubled ... 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 pancake, but because it is ... 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

Wednesday, July 27, 2016