241–260 of 264 results

Professional Telescopes

New Eyes on the Cosmic-Ray Sky

High on the Argentinian pampa, 1,600 water-filled "eyes" await the arrival of the most powerful high-energy particles in the universe.

Cosmology

Hubble Finds a Mystery Object

What was it? While monitoring a cluster of galaxies, the Hubble Space Telescope recorded what seems like a new class of astronomical object brightening and fading over six months.

Cosmology

Lensed Light Used to Weigh Dark Matter

Astronomers use a novel method of weighing distant galaxies to measure their masses and find that there's more matter than the galaxies' light can easily explain.

Cosmology

Dark Energy's Early Fingerprints

Studying the effect of galaxy clusters on the background radiation from the early universe, University of Hawaii astronomers have added to the pile of evidence for dark energy.

M101

Cosmology

A Galactic Dead Zone

Astronomers find that the organic compounds common throughout our galaxy and others suddenly disappear along M101's outer edge.

Cosmology

Weighing Black Holes with a Thermometer

Astronomers use the 12-million-kelvin-blaze of a galaxy's central region to measure its supermassive black hole.

Cosmology

Faint Supernovae Remain Unexplained

A subclass of supernovae that fades much faster than expected reveals possible kinks in astronomers' theories of what causes these explosions.

Cosmology

Hubble Looks into the Coma Cluster

The HST captures a pristine image of various galaxy types grouped together, but what is most intriguing is what the image doesn't reveal.

Galaxies

Hubble's Colliding Galaxies

No two galaxy collisions are alike, as shown in 59 weird images just released by the Hubble Heritage Project.

Space Missions

A Record-Breaking Gamma-Ray Burst

The visible-light glow of a gamma-ray burst briefly shone at magnitude 5.4, despite its distance of 7.5 billion light-years — more than halfway across the visible universe.

Cosmology

Standard-Candle Supernova Confusion

Type 1a supernovas are crucial for measuring how the expansion of the universe has been changing. But no one knows for sure exactly what they are.

Cosmology

Monster Black Holes Soon to Collide?

The members of a binary black hole in Cancer, one of which is unbelievably massive, look to be on a collision course.

Cosmology

Astronomers Find Double Einstein Ring

A unique example of gravitational lensing in the universe gives clues to the distribution of dark matter in galaxies.

Big nothing in space

Cosmology

Cold Evidence for a Cosmic "Texture"?

A ripple in the cosmic background radiation hints at an irregularity in spacetime. . . maybe.

Space Missions

Refining Hipparcos's Star Distances

To extract even better star distances, a Cambridge astronomer who took part in the Hipparcos mission has just completed a whole new analysis of the raw data.

Cosmology

Mystery Pulse from Outer Space

Six years ago a radio telescope in Australia recorded a mysterious radio burst that lasted only a tiny fraction of a second and reached Earth from more than a billion light-years away. Astronomers have no idea what caused it.

Dwarf galaxy Leo II

Galaxies

Finding the Missing Dwarf Galaxies

Minigalaxies of dark matter ought to be everywhere, says the best theory of how the universe came to be. Now they're finally being found.

Cosmology

A Whole Lotta Nothing

If you're looking for a place to really get away from it all, head toward a lovely spot in southeastern Eridanus.

Cosmology

Whole Lot of Nothing

A billion light-year-wide "hole" in space is a very cold and empty place.

Space Missions

"Magnificent" Neutron Star Found

Sizzling with X-rays but mum at radio frequencies, a nearby, on-its-own neutron star is causing astronomers to scratch their heads.