Large Magellanic Cloud tagged posts

Astronomers uncover extremely hot and violent eruption from first ever near-infrared analysis of a recurrent nova outside of the Milky Way Galaxy. Using the Gemini South telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, partly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated by NSF NOIRLab, and the Magellan Baade Telescope, astronomers have for the first time observed a recurring nova outside of the Milky Way in near-infrared light. The data revealed highly unusual chemical emissions as well as one of the hottest temperatures ever reported for a nova, both indicative of an extremely violent eruption.

Nova explosions occur in binary star systems in which a white dwarf — the dense remnant of a dead star — continually siphons stellar material from a nearby compan...

The strange behavior of hypervelocity stars suggests a nearby dwarf galaxy must contain a supermassive black hole. If so, a collision with the Milky Way is inevitable.

Back in 1971, a couple of British astronomers predicted the existence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy. And in 1974, other astronomers found it, naming it Sagittarius A*.

Since then, astronomers have discovered that a similar “supermassive black hole” sits at the center of almost every other large galaxy. In 2019, they took the first image of a supermassive black hole. Today, these exotic objects are a fundamental part of our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve.

But what of smaller astronomical bodies, like the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf sa...

University of Copenhagen astrophysicists help explain a mysterious phenomenon, whereby stars suddenly vanish from the night sky. Their study of an unusual binary star system has resulted in convincing evidence that massive stars can completely collapse and become black holes without a supernova explosion.

One day, the star at the center of our own solar system, the Sun, will begin to expand until it engulfs Earth. It will then become increasingly unstable until it eventually contracts into a small and dense object known as a white dwarf.

However, if the Sun were of a weight class roughly eight times greater or more, it would probably go out with a huge bang — as a supernova...