An international team of researchers led by a UC Riverside astronomer has completed the largest ever survey designed to find very distant clusters of galaxies. Named the Spitzer Adaptation of the Red-sequence Cluster Survey, "SpARCS" detects galaxy clusters using deep ground-based optical observations from the CTIO 4m and CFHT 3.6m telescopes, combined with Spitzer Space Telescope infrar... read full post picked by AutumnLotus 5 months ago

Through some of the very first scientific observations with the brand-new Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, astronomers has found that a recently discovered tiny companion galaxy to our Milky Way, named the Hercules Dwarf Galaxy, has truly exceptional properties: while basically all of its known peers in the realm of these tiny dwarf galaxies are rather round, this galaxy at a distance o... read full post picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Newborn stars shine like celestial sparklers in a new portrait of the nearby Triangulum Galaxy – the most detailed ultraviolet image of a galaxy ever taken. Astronomers will use the image, taken by NASA's Swift telescope, to create an "age map" of the galaxy's components to understand how galaxies evolve over time. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Australian astronomers have made the most detailed map yet of a radio galaxy, which could lead to a better understanding of these strange phenomena.

The map of Centaurus A, a galaxy in the Centaurus constellation, covers a segment of sky 200 times the area of the full moon. picked by AutumnLotus 5 months ago

Dust has been a nuisance because it has obscured galaxies, and the stars within them, by absorbing the radiation they emit. But more recently dust has started to present opportunities because it emits radiation itself as a consequence of being heated up by nearby stars. Aided by new observing instruments and sophisticated computer software, this radiation enables astronomers to reconstruct what li... read full post picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Astronomers from Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have detected for the first time the molecules methanimine and hydrogen cyanide – two ingredients that build life-forming amino acids – in a galaxy some 250 million light years away. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

The Hubble Space Telescope has found a large galaxy 10.6 billion light-years away from Earth that is stuffing itself with smaller galaxies caught like flies in a web of gravity. The galaxy is so far away that astronomers are seeing it as it looked in the early formative years of the Universe, only 2 billion years after the Big Bang. picked by 2manyusernames 3 years ago

What has appeared as a mild-mannered elliptical galaxy in previous studies is revealing its wild side in new images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble photos show shells of stars around a bright quasar, known as MC2 1635+119, which dominates the center of the galaxy. The shells' presence indicates a titanic clash with another galaxy in the relatively recent past. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

This composite color infrared image of the center of our Milky Way galaxy reveals a new population of massive stars and new details in complex structures in the hot ionized gas swirling around the central 300 light-years. picked by AutumnLotus 11 months ago

Thats right, I said PLAY! Everyones favorite Comedic sci-fi fantasy is now avaible to interact with. An extremly fun, and funny, text based game in which you play as Arthur and try to well.. stay alive. (yes it's kind of old, but still awesome) picked by dorkfire 3 years ago

A new image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars sprouting in the backwoods of a galaxy -- a relatively desolate region of space more than 100,000 light-years from the galaxy's bustling center. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

A young star speeding away from the Milky Way is in fact an alien visitor, astronomers have confirmed. The wayward object is one of several rogues that are giving astronomers a glimpse into the volatile nature of our galaxy and others. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

At night, the purity of the sky is unmatched. When the Sun goes down in Atacama, the sky quickly turned dark blue and the glow of thousands of stars awakened while the desert - invisible, empty and silent - seems to disappear.

Check out the time lapse video clips of the Milky Way galaxy over the Atacama Desert.

**To a city girl like me, this is just stunning. picked by bingo 8 months ago

Orphaned stars are being born in a vast tail of material stretching behind a faraway galaxy. The finding is evidence that orphaned stars — those not orbiting the center of a galaxy in normal fashion — are much more common than thought. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Douglas Adams's increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is to be extended to six titles, after Adams's widow Jane Belson sanctioned Eoin Colfer to continue the series. picked by 2manyusernames 1 year ago

The Very Large Telescope has taken one of the best ever images of two galaxies locked in a slow motion, disruptive collision, scientists say.

The image has also given astronomers a peak at an unusual exploding star in the same area of the sky. picked by AutumnLotus 9 months ago

For decades, astronomers have pictured our galaxy as sporting four major, spiral arms, however new images effectively sever two appendages, revealing the Milky Way has just two major arms. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

ESO's Wide Field Imager has captured the intricate swirls of the spiral galaxy Messier 83, a smaller look-alike of our own Milky Way. Shining with the light of billions of stars and the ruby red glow of hydrogen gas, it is a beautiful example of a barred spiral galaxy, whose shape has led to it being nicknamed the Southern Pinwheel. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

The galaxy, as large as the Milky Way, is about 12.8 billion light-years away and harbors a supermassive black hole that contains at least a billion times as much matter as our sun. The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, and faraway objects like this are seen as they existed near the dawn of time, their light just now arriving at Earth. picked by kakana 3 months ago

This Chandra X-ray Observatory image shows the debris of a massive star explosion in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth. The supernova remnant (SNR) shown here, N132D, is the brightest in the Magellanic clouds, and belongs to a rare class of oxygen-rich remnants. Most of the oxygen that we breathe on Earth is thought to have come from explosions similar... read full post picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago