Category Astronomy/Space

Vela supercluster (VSC) and the Shapely supercluster (SC)

The Australian National University (ANU) is part of an international team of astronomers that found one of the Universe’s biggest superclusters of galaxies near the Milky Way. Professor Matthew Colless from ANU said the Vela supercluster, which had previously gone undetected as it was hidden by stars and dust in the Milky Way, was a huge mass that influenced the motion of our Galaxy.

“This is one of the biggest concentrations of galaxies in the Universe – possibly the biggest in the neighbourhood of our Galaxy, but that will need to be confirmed by further study,” said Professor Colless...

Tabby’s Star in infrared (2MASS survey) and ultraviolet (GALEX).

In its search for extrasolar planets, the Kepler space telescope looks for stars whose light flux periodically dims, signaling the passing of an orbiting planet in front of the star. But the timing and duration of diminished light flux episodes Kepler detected coming from KIC 846852, known as Tabby’s star, are a mystery. These dimming events vary in magnitude and don’t occur at regular intervals, making an orbiting planet an unlikely explanation. The source of these unusual dimming events is the subject of intense speculation: from asteroid belts to alien activity.

Now a team of scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggest the luminosity variations may be intrinsic to the star itself...

This glowing nebula, named NGC 248, is located within the Small Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way and about 200 000 light-years from Earth. The nebula was observed with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys in Sept. 2015, as part of a survey called the Small Magellanic cloud Investigation of Dust and Gas Evolution (SMIDGE). Credit: NASA, ESA, STScI, K. Sandstrom (University of California, San Diego), and the SMIDGE team

The sheer observing power of Hubble Space Telescope is rarely better illustrated than in an image such as this. This glowing pink nebula, named NGC 248, is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, SMC, just under 200,000 light-years away and yet can still be seen in great detail...