Galaxy

Supermassive black holes create turbulent environments at the centers of galaxies, which should disrupt star formation. But astronomers have peered closer at the heart of the Milky Way and found several “stellar eggs” – and they seem to be hatching.

Astronomers have discovered the aftermath of a cosmic hit-and-run in our own neighborhood. While studying the closest star cluster to the Sun, ESA scientists realized it may have been disrupted by a huge lump of invisible mass, possibly dark matter.

On a scale that’s hard to fathom, the universe is structured like a “cosmic web." Astronomers have now directly observed light from filaments in this web, by staring at a patch of sky with a deep-field telescope to detect faint dwarf galaxies.

Supermassive black holes are usually stationary objects, thanks to their huge masses anchoring them in place. But now, astronomers have found evidence of a supermassive monster on the move within its home galaxy.

Massive galaxies may be siphoning off star forming material from the very hearts of smaller satellite galaxies, causing the cosmic structures to stagnate and essentially cease evolving, as their larger cousins continue to grow.

Astronomers have identified the remains of a rare type of supernova in our home galaxy for the first time. These events, known as Type Iax supernovae, occur when white dwarfs explode and may leave behind a “zombie star.”

Astronomers have captured a stunning image of one of the Milky Way’s neighboring spiral galaxies. The portrait was taken using an instrument that was created to hunt down dark energy – a force that may be accelerating the expansion of the universe.

By studying the twinkling of stars, astronomers in Australia have discovered a huge cloud of cold gas in our galaxy, not far from Earth. This invisible mass could provide new hints about where to find the universe’s missing matter.

How many galaxies are there in the observable universe? Not as many as we thought, according to a new study. NASA’s New Horizons probe has measured the blackness of the sky and found that there’s probably “only” a few hundred billion faint galaxies.

Dark matter is currently the most widely accepted hypothesis for explaining some of the weirdness we see in the cosmos. But now astronomers have discovered evidence in over 150 galaxies for a long-standing alternative model of “modified gravity.”

Astronomers have precisely measured the distance to the oldest and farthest known galaxy. Light left GN-z11 around 13.4 billion years ago, when the universe was a cosmic toddler, meaning this galaxy marks the very edge of the observable universe.

NASA has released a collection of 50 stunning Hubble images to celebrate the veteran telescope’s 30th anniversary, which took place earlier this year. The images show 30 cosmic objects, visible to amateur astronomers across the globe.