Space Telescopes News

September 9, 2016

Rare Fossil Relic of Early Milky Way

Supernova That Wasn't: Tale of 3 Cosmic Eruptions

First Stars Formed Even Later Than Thought

Milky Way's Blowout Bash 6 Million Years Ago

Latest Headlines

updated 1:12am EDT

New Light on the Complex Nature of 'Hot Jupiter' Atmospheres

Sep. 2, 2016 — A team of international researchers used state-of-the-art modelling techniques to extensively study the atmosphere of a 'hot Jupiter' found 150 light-years from Earth. The ... read more

NASA Team Probes Peculiar Age-Defying Star

Aug. 29, 2016 — For years, astronomers have puzzled over a massive star lodged deep in the Milky Way that shows conflicting signs of being extremely old and extremely young. Researchers ... read more

Hunt for Ninth Planet Reveals New Extremely Distant Solar System Objects

Aug. 29, 2016 — In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, researchers have observed several never-before-seen objects at extreme distances from the Sun in our ... 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

Can One Cosmic Enigma Help Solve Another?

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astrophysicists have proposed a clever new way to shed light on the mystery of dark matter, believed to make up most of the universe. The irony is they want to try to pin down the nature of this ... read more

NASA's WISE, Fermi Missions Reveal a Surprising Blazar Connection

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astronomers using observations from NASA's WISE and Fermi missions have confirmed a connection between the infrared and gamma-ray light emitted by blazars, a class of distant ... 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

Planet Found in Habitable Zone Around Nearest Star

Aug. 24, 2016 — Astronomers have found clear evidence of a planet orbiting the closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri. The long-sought world, designated Proxima b, orbits its cool red ... read more

Venus-Like Exoplanet Might Have Oxygen Atmosphere, but Not Life

Aug. 18, 2016 — The distant planet GJ 1132b intrigued astronomers when it was discovered last year. Located just 39 light-years from Earth, it might have an atmosphere despite being baked to ... read more

Brown Dwarfs Reveal Exoplanets' Secrets

Aug. 15, 2016 — Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also ... read more

Sky-High Pic Du Midi Offers Tourists Stellar Views

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

New Worlds New Horizons: A Midterm Assessment

Aug. 15, 2016 — While scientists have made remarkable advancements in astronomy and astrophysics since the beginning of this decade -- notably the first detection of gravitational waves and the discovery of distant ... 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 ... 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 our ... 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 of years, they ... read more

Stellar Lab in Sagittarius

Aug. 10, 2016 — The small smattering of bright blue stars in a new ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18 this star cluster contains stars that ... read more

'GPS in Space': Bringing Autonomous Interplanetary Travel Closer to Reality

Aug. 4, 2016 — An accurate method for spacecraft navigation takes a leap forward today as new research reveals that a spacecraft's position in space in the direction of a particular pulsar can be calculated ... read more

Space Scientists Observe Io's Atmospheric Collapse During Eclipse

Aug. 2, 2016 — Astronomers have documented atmospheric changes on Io, Jupiter's volcanically active satellite, as the giant planet casts its shadow over the moon's surface during daily ... read more

Faintest Hisses from Space Reveal Famous Star's Past Life

Aug. 1, 2016 — Using a telescope in remote outback Australia, astronomers have peered into the past of a nearby star millions of years before its famous explosion.The research paints a picture of the star's ... 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 center of our own galaxy, ... read more

Is Earthly Life Premature from a Cosmic Perspective?

Aug. 1, 2016 — The universe is 13.8 billion years old, while our planet formed just 4.5 billion years ago. Some scientists think this time gap means that life on other planets could be billions of years older than ... read more

Chorus of Black Holes Radiates X-Rays

July 28, 2016 — The NuSTAR mission is identifying which black holes erupt with the highest-energy X-rays, report scientists. The results will ultimately help astronomers understand how the growth patterns of ... read more

White Dwarf Lashes Red Dwarf With Mystery Ray

July 27, 2016 — Astronomers have discovered a new type of exotic binary star: in the system AR Scorpii a rapidly spinning white dwarf star is powering electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high energy ... read more

Jupiter's Great Red Spot Heats Planet's Upper Atmosphere

July 27, 2016 — Researchers have discovered that Jupiter's Great Red Spot may provide the mysterious source of energy required to heat the planet's upper atmosphere to the unusually high values ... read more

Finding the Loneliest Young Star

July 27, 2016 — Alone on the cosmic road, far from any known celestial object, a young, independent star is going through a tremendous growth spurt. When a team of scientists examined infrared images of the same ... read more

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

NASA Team Begins Testing of a 'New-Fangled' Optic

July 26, 2016 — t's an age-old astronomical truth: To resolve smaller and smaller physical details of distant celestial objects, scientists need larger and larger light-collecting mirrors. This challenge is not ... read more

Light Shed on a Superluminous Supernova Which Appears to Have Exploded Twice

July 26, 2016 — An international group of researchers has used the GTC to observe a superluminous supernova almost from the moment it occurred. It has revealed surprising behaviour, because this supernova showed an ... read more

First Images from Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager (AOLI)

July 26, 2016 — The Adaptive Optics Lucky Imager (AOLI) on the William Herschel Telescope (WHT) has obtained its first adaptive-optics closed-loop results, an important milestone in the development of this ... 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

Monday, August 15, 2016