Category Astronomy/Space

2XMM J14345J0.5+033843 lies nearly 400 million light-years away from Earth. It is a Seyfert galaxy that is dominated by something known as an Active Galactic Nucleus — its core is thought to contain a supermassive black hole that is emitting huge amounts of radiation, pouring energetic X-rays out into the universe. The other fuzzy object in the frame was named in the same way — it is a bright galaxy named 2XMM J143448.3+033749.
Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA

Jet, disk, and disk atmosphere in the HH 212 protostellar system. (a) A composite image for the HH 212 jet in different molecules, combining the images from the Very Large Telescope (McCaughrean et al. 2002) and ALMA (Lee et al. 2015). Orange image shows the dusty envelope+disk mapped with ALMA. (b) A zoom-in to the central dusty disk. The asterisk marks the position of the protostar. A size scale of our solar system is shown in the lower right corner for comparison. (c) Atmosphere of the accretion disk detected with ALMA. In the disk atmosphere, green is for deuterated methanol, blue for methanethiol, and red for formamide. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Lee et al.

New planet candidates from the eighth Kepler planet candidate catalog show numerous terrestrial worlds that are near the size of Earth and within the habitable zone of their stars. The dark green span represents an optimistic estimate for habitable zone, while the brighter green a more conservative estimate. Blue circles are confirmed exoplanets, while yellow circles are new planet candidates that require follow-up observations. Credit: NASA/Ames Research Center/Wendy Stenzel

This is an artist’s representation of a conceptual design for the color detector, which uses thermoelectric structures with arrays of nanoscale wires that absorb different wavelengths of light based on their width. Credit: Harry Atwater and Kelly Mauser/Caltech