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

Galaxies tend to give birth to their stars on the road, while travelling down intergalactic highways towards cosmic cities called galaxy clusters, new Spitzer Space Telescope observations reveal. Galaxies in relatively empty regions of the universe flock towards densely populated galaxy clusters, attracted there by the clusters' gravity. 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

A dazzlingly detailed image released by NASA scientists shows the chaotic conditions in which stars are born and die - in this case in a huge nebula in another neighbourhood of our Milky Way galaxy. picked by AutumnLotus 3 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

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

More than 800,000 snapshots from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have been stitched together to create a new "coming of age" portrait of stars in our inner Milky Way galaxy. The image depicts an area of sky 120 degrees wide by two degrees tall. High-res zoomable image. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year 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

The European Space Agency (Esa) has released a stunning image of the spiral galaxy M51, otherwise known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. picked by AutumnLotus 5 months 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

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

One of our closest galactic neighbors shows its awesome beauty in this new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. M33, also known as the Triangulum Galaxy, is a member of what's known as our Local Group of galaxies. Along with our own Milky Way, this group travels together in the universe, as they are gravitationally bound. picked by AutumnLotus 8 months ago

A newly discovered dwarf galaxy in the Local Group has been found to have formed in a region of space far from our own and is falling into our system for the first time in its history. 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

Edwin Hubble once called IC 10 “one of the most curious objects in the sky,” and new observations of the extremely faint, lightweight dwarf galaxy are giving scientists new clues about how populations of stars are born. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Perhaps the first stars in the newborn universe did not shine, but instead were invisible “dark stars” 400 to 200,000 times wider than the sun and powered by the annihilation of mysterious dark matter. The study calculated how the birth of the first stars almost 13 billion years ago might have been influenced by the presence of dark matter – the unseen, yet-unidentified stuff tha... read full post picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Astronomers have argued for years over whether massive galaxies form from scratch, or by chunking together smaller galaxies. Lately, evidence is building for the latter theory, and a new study adds to the growing picture of galaxy formation as a clumpy affair. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

Four galaxies are slamming into each other and kicking up billions of stars in one of the largest cosmic smash-ups ever observed. picked by DemureArt 2 years ago

We all love pictures of galaxies, nebula and the like. Here are 10 of the best ones from the last 16 years. picked by 2manyusernames 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