Tag: Galaxies

Hubble Views a Galactic Supernova Site

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2 min read Hubble Views a Galactic Supernova Site This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image is of the small galaxy known as UGC 5189A. ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Filippenko This image features a relatively small galaxy known as UGC 5189A, which is located about 150 million light-years away in the constellation Leo. This galaxy was observed by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study a supernova explosion in 2010 known as SN 2010jl. This particular supernova is notable because it was an exceptionally luminous supernova event. In fact, over a period of three years,…

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Webb Shows Many Early Galaxies Looked Like Pool Noodles, Surfboards

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5 Min Read Webb Shows Many Early Galaxies Looked Like Pool Noodles, Surfboards Researchers are analyzing distant galaxies when the universe was only 600 million to 6 billion years old. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Steve Finkelstein (UT Austin), Micaela Bagley (UT Austin), Rebecca Larson (UT Austin) Researchers analyzing images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have found that galaxies in the early universe are often flat and elongated, like surfboards and pool noodles – and are rarely round, like volleyballs or frisbees. “Roughly 50 to 80% of the galaxies we…

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How do we know what the Milky Way looks like?

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Although our telescopes have captured some truly stunning images of the Milky Way, astronomers have only a vague understanding of our home galaxy. It took a lot of work even to get that sketch, and it’s amazing what we’ve been able to learn from our limited vantage point. Here on Earth’s surface, the Milky Way galaxy appears to the naked eye as a nebulous band across the sky. While astronomers and philosophers have debated the true nature and location of the Milky Way for ages, the great astronomer, physicist and…

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Surprise gamma-ray discovery could shed light on cosmic mystery

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Astronomers have discovered an unexpected and unexplained feature outside our Milky Way galaxy that’s radiating high-energy light called gamma rays. The team behind the discovery, including NASA and University of Maryland cosmologist Alexander Kashlinsky, found the gamma-ray signal while searching through 13 years of data from NASA’s Fermi Telescope.  “It is a completely serendipitous discovery,” Kashlinsky said in a statement. “We found a much stronger signal, and in a different part of the sky, than the one we were looking for.” What makes this gamma-ray signal even stranger is the…

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Astronomers accidentally discover ‘dark’ primordial galaxy with no visible stars

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Astronomers have accidentally discovered a dark galaxy filled with primordial gas untouched that appears to have no visible stars.  The researchers behind the discovery say this galaxy, designated J0613+52, could be “the faintest galaxy found to date.” Interestingly, scientists using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) discovered the “dark” galaxy through a complete error.  “The GBT was accidentally pointed to the wrong coordinates and found this object. It’s a galaxy made only out of gas — it has no visible stars,” Green Bank Observatory senior scientist Karen O’Neil said in a…

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Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst

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5 min read Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the host galaxy of an exceptionally powerful fast radio burst, FRB 20220610A. Hubble’s sensitivity and sharpness reveals a compact group of multiple galaxies that may be in the process of merging. They existed when the universe was only 5 billion years old. FRB 20220610A was first detected on June 10, 2022, by the Australian Square Kilometer Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope in Western Australia. The European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope…

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Ripples in the oldest known spiral galaxy may shed light on the origins of our Milky Way

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Observations have revealed the first-ever seismic waves seen in an ancient galaxy, possibly offering new insight into the origins of our very own Milky Way.  The galaxy, known as BRI 1335-0417, is more than 12 billion years old, making it the oldest and farthest known spiral galaxy in our universe. Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) radio telescope in Chile, researchers studied the motion of gas around the galaxy and, in turn, captured the formation of a seismic wave. Such phenomena has never been observed before in such an…

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Unexpected cosmic clumping could disprove our best understanding of the universe

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A survey of more than 25 million galaxies has found a strange contradiction in how astronomers measure the universe’s clumpiness, and it could threaten the standard model of cosmology, which describes how the universe formed and evolved. The discrepancy, found by measuring the warping of light by the powerful gravitational fields of distant galaxies, suggests that the cosmos is less packed-together than previously predicted. If the measurement is accurate, it will join the Hubble tension as yet another significant challenge to our preconceptions of how the cosmos evolved — one…

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After 2 years in space, the James Webb Space Telescope has broken cosmology. Can it be fixed?

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Something is awry in our expanding cosmos. Nearly a century ago, the astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered the balloon-like inflation of the universe and the accelerating rush of all galaxies away from each other. Following that expansion backward in time led to our current best understanding of how everything began — the Big Bang.  But over the past decade, an alarming hole has been growing in this picture: Depending on where astronomers look, the rate of the universe’s expansion (a value called the Hubble constant) varies significantly. Related: ‘It could be profound’: How astronomer Wendy…

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Meet the Infrared Telescopes That Paved the Way for NASA’s Webb

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Scientists have been studying the universe with infrared space telescopes for 40 years, including these NASA missions, from left: the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), launched in 1983; the Spitzer Space Telescope, launched in 2003; and the James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021. NASA/JPL-Caltech The Webb telescope has opened a new window onto the universe, but it builds on missions going back 40 years, including Spitzer and the Infrared Astronomical Satellite. On Dec. 25, NASA will celebrate the two-year launch anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope – the largest…

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