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    Largest-ever Map of Universe’s Active Supermassive Black Holes Released

    March 19, 2024, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Largest-ever map of universe's active supermassive black holes released
    An infographic explaining the creation of a new map of around 1.3 million quasars from across the visible universe. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024

    Astronomers have charted the largest-ever volume of the universe with a new map of active supermassive black holes living at the centers of galaxies. Called quasars, the gas-gobbling black holes are, ironically, some of the universe’s brightest objects.

    The new map logs the location of about 1.3 million quasars in space and time, the furthest of which shone bright when the universe was only 1.5 billion years old. (For comparison, the universe is now 13.7 billion years old.)

    “This quasar catalog is different from all previous catalogs in that it gives us a three-dimensional ma...

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    Oldest Planetary Debris in Our Galaxy found in New Study

    November 8, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Oldest planetary debris in our galaxy found from new study
    Artist’s impression of the old white dwarfs WDJ2147-4035 and WDJ1922+0233 surrounded by orbiting planetary debris, which will accrete onto the stars and pollute their atmospheres. WDJ2147-4035 is extremely red and dim, while WDJ1922+0233 is unusually blue. Credit: University of Warwick/Dr Mark Garlick. Credit: University of Warwick/Dr Mark Garlick

    Astronomers led by the University of Warwick have identified the oldest star in our galaxy that is accreting debris from orbiting planetesimals, making it one of the oldest rocky and icy planetary systems discovered in the Milky Way.

    Their findings are published today (Nov...

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    Gaia reveals that most Milky Way Companion Galaxies are Newcomers to our Corner of Space

    November 26, 2021, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way

    Data from ESA’s Gaia mission is re-writing the history of our galaxy, the Milky Way. What had traditionally been thought of as satellite galaxies to the Milky Way are now revealed to be mostly newcomers to our galactic environment.

    A dwarf galaxy is a collection of between thousand and several billion stars. For decades it has been widely believed that the dwarf galaxies that surround the Milky Way are satellites, meaning that they are caught in orbit around our galaxy, and have been our constant companions for many billions of years. Now the motions of these dwarf galaxies have been computed with unprecedented precision thanks to data from Gaia’s early third data release and the results are surprising.

    François Hammer, Observatoire de Paris—Un...

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    Gaia starts Mapping the Galactic Bar in the Milky Way

    July 18, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This colour chart, superimposed on an artistic representation of the galaxy, shows the distribution of 150 million stars in the Milky Way probed using data from the second release of ESA’s Gaia mission in combination with infrared and optical surveys, with orange/yellow hues indicating greater density of stars. Most of these stars are red giants. While the majority of charted stars are located closer to the Sun (the larger orange/yellow blob in the lower part of the image), a large and elongated feature populated by many stars is also visible in the central region of the galaxy: this is the first geometric indication of the galactic bar. Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC, A. Khalatyan (AIP) & StarHorse Team; mapa artístic de la Galaxia: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

    The first direct ...

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