WISE

A team has made some intriguing discoveries in the outer regions of the Milky Way. Astronomers mapped the fringes of the sparse halo that envelops our home galaxy, and found the wake of a dwarf galaxy on an eventual collision course with the Milky Way.

The cosmos is full of strange things, like planets made of diamond, mysterious radio bursts and quasars that shine like 600 trillion Suns. Now astronomers have spotted a bizarre star that may prove to be one of the rarest objects ever, with maybe as few as five or six of them in the galaxy.

A NASA-led citizen scientist project has discovered an ancient white dwarf that’s surrounded by large rings, which is shaking up our understanding of how these systems form.

The Sun is a mere 10-watt bulb compared to quasars, extremely luminous galactic cores that shine so intensely thanks to their ravenous hunger for nearby material. Now, astronomers have detected the brightest quasar ever found, shining with the light of almost 600 trillion Suns.

Astronomers at Australian National University have spotted a black hole so bright that were it in our home galaxy, it would outshine all the stars in the sky. This supermassive monster also happens to be the fastest-growing black hole ever seen, devouring the equivalent of the Sun every two days.

Prompted by a series of tweets, a pair of astronomers have used data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer orbital telescope to identify an image of a massive “X”-shaped star formation located in our galaxy's central bulge.

The brightest galaxy ever discovered may be in the process of tearing itself apart. WISE J224607.57-052635.0 (W2246-0526) is believed to be brighter than 300 trillion Suns, however the supermassive black hole at the centre of the galaxy could also be responsible for a drastic transformation.

​Astronomers have discovered a massive galaxy cluster located an impressive 8.5 billion light-years from Earth, the study of which may allow us to glimpse the evolutionary mechanics of the largest structures in our Universe.

Three space-based observatories appear to have picked up an unusual increase in activity from the supermassive black hole located at the center of our galaxy. The data shows it currently throwing out ten times the usual amount of bright X-ray flares.​

A new study has measured 200,000 galaxies in an effort to chart the rate at which our Universe is outputting energy, and effectively dying.

A fresh study examining data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft has led to to the discovery of the brightest galaxy in the universe.

A fresh analysis of data collected by NASA's WISE telescope has cast doubt on the widely accepted unified model for the composition of black holes. The study examined 170,000 supermassive black holes, and will require scientists to present new theories on the structure of these stellar giants.