Category Astronomy/Space

These six images represent the variety of star-forming regions in nearby galaxies. The galaxies are part of the Hubble Space Telescope’s Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey (LEGUS), the sharpest, most comprehensive ultraviolet-light survey of star-forming galaxies in the nearby universe. The six images consist of two dwarf galaxies (UGC 5340 and UGCA 281) and four large spiral galaxies (NGC 3368, NGC 3627, NGC 6744, and NGC 4258). The images are a blend of ultraviolet light and visible light from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Credit: NASA/ESA/LEGUS team

Capitalizing on the unparalleled sharpness and spectral range of NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, an international team of astronomers is releasing the most comprehensive, high-resolution UV-light survey of nearby s...

Gas in the Orion A cloud star-forming region. Each of the three colors (red, green and blue) represents a different velocity range. Credit: NSF/S. Kong, J. Feddersen, H. Arce & CARMA-NRO Orion Survey team

A Yale-led research group has created the most detailed maps yet of a vast seedbed of stars similar to Earth’s Sun. The maps provide unprecedented detail of the structure of the Orion A molecular cloud, the closest star-forming region of high-mass stars. Orion A hosts a variety of star-forming environments, including dense star clusters similar to the one where Earth’s Sun is believed to have formed...

Whirlpool Galaxy (stock image). Credit: © allexxandarx / Fotolia

Astronomers have been keenly peering into M51, or the Whirlpool Galaxy, since the 1800s, its signature spiral structure informing the earliest debates over the nature of galaxies and the Cosmos at large. But no one – not with the naked eye or with increasingly powerful modern telescopes – has ever seen what Case Western Reserve University astronomers first observed using a refurbished 75-year-old telescope in the mountains of southwest Arizona. “I literally looked at the image and said, ‘What in the world is that?'” said Case Western Reserve astronomy professor Chris Mihos.

What it was turned out to be a massive cloud of ionized hydrogen gas spewed from a nearby galaxy and then essentially “cooked” by radiation from the gala...

This image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5+2223 taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; the inset image is the very distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1, seen as it was 13.3 billion years ago and observed with ALMA. Here, the oxygen distribution detected with ALMA is depicted in red. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, W. Zheng (JHU), M. Postman (STScI), the CLASH Team, Hashimoto et al.

Most distant Oxygen ever detected in the universe. An international team of astronomers used ALMA to observe a distant galaxy called MACS1149-JD1. They detected a very faint glow emitted by ionised oxygen in the galaxy...