Astronomers have discovered and mapped an enormous structure in the early universe with a mass the equivalent to one million billion times that of the Sun. The proto-supercluster, which has been named Hyperion after the Titan of Greek mythology, formed when the cosmos was only 2.3 billion years old.
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Astronomers have captured a striking view of the galaxy NGC 3981, which is revealed shining with the light of energetic stars, surrounded by its ghostly spiral arms. Located roughly 65 million light-years from Earth, it appears to have been disrupted by a close call with a neighboring galaxy.
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Astronomers have released one of the most comprehensive photos snapped by the Hubble Space Telescope, combining ultraviolet, infrared and visible light into one image that shows thousands of galaxies spread across space and time.
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The results of a new study suggest that a number of small satellite galaxies orbiting the Milky Way are actually some of the first to come into existence following the creation of the universe.
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An international team of astronomers has detected the most distant radio galaxy ever observed. By measuring the redshift of its light, the researchers determined that the object is about 12 billion light-years away, which dates it back to when the universe itself was just a kid.
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Discoveries that back up Einstein’s theory of general relativity are still being made. The latest comes from the Max Planck Institute, where astronomers have watched how the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way pulls and stretches the light from a star as it makes its closest pass.
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According to a newly-released paper, the Andromeda galaxy may have committed fratricide on a cosmic scale some 2 billion years ago, by ripping apart an enormous galaxy, and cannibalizing much of the body.
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The MeerKAT radio telescope array is finally up and running in South Africa. To show off what the facility can do, astronomers have pointed all 64 antennas towards the center of the Milky Way galaxy, and snapped one of the clearest shots ever taken of the mysterious region.
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About 3.7 billion years ago, a neutrino was thrown out of a blazar and launched towards Earth. The ghostly particle was detected by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica and traced back to its point of origin, helping to confirm the most distant neutrino source ever identified.
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An international team of astronomers has now found evidence of a celestial smash-up between the Milky Way and an unknown dwarf galaxy that took place around eight to 10 billion years ago, and forever changed the face of our home galaxy.
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