A camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured a unique view of the moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. The series of test images shows the fully illuminated 'dark side' of the moon that is never visible from Earth.
Aug 6th, 2015
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A team of astronomers has discovered a giant swirling disk of gas 10 billion light-years away - a galaxy-in-the-making that is actively being fed cool primordial gas tracing back to the Big Bang. The finding provides the strongest observational support yet for what is known as the cold-flow model of galaxy formation.
Aug 5th, 2015
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A new, large-scale computer simulation has shown for the first time that large disk galaxies, much like our own Milky Way, may have existed in the early days of the universe.
Aug 5th, 2015
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This extraordinary bubble, glowing like the ghost of a star in the haunting darkness of space, may appear supernatural and mysterious, but it is a familiar astronomical object: a planetary nebula, the remnants of a dying star. This is the best view of the little-known object ESO 378-1 yet obtained and was captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope in northern Chile.
Aug 5th, 2015
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A group of scientists think they have the answer to this so-called 'lithium problem': it was destroyed and re-accumulated by these stars shortly after they were born.
Aug 5th, 2015
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Study suggests planetary rings have a universal particle distribution.
Aug 5th, 2015
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Astronomers have found what appears to be the largest feature in the observable universe: a ring of nine gamma ray bursts - and hence galaxies - 5 billion light years across.
Aug 4th, 2015
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A super-dense star formed in the aftermath of a supernova explosion is shooting out powerful jets of material into space, research suggests.
Aug 4th, 2015
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A star in the constellation Cassiopeia has a planet in a three-day orbit that transits, or crosses in front of its star. At a distance of just 21 light-years, it is by far the closest transiting planet to Earth, which makes it ideal for follow-up studies. Moreover, it is the nearest rocky planet confirmed outside our solar system.
Aug 3rd, 2015
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Components used on a space mission must be cleaned meticulously. Fraunhofer researchers designed a cleanroom for the ESA (European Space Agency) in which the most infinitesimal contaminants can be removed.
Aug 3rd, 2015
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A mile-long asteroid that raced past Earth July 25 at about 45,000 miles per hour was imaged by radar telescopes so that astronomers could discern its precise orbit and physical shape.
Jul 31st, 2015
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Astronomers have created a new map of the Milky Way that provides the first clear evidence of migration of stars throughout our galaxy. The study, which determined that 30 percent of stars have traveled across the galaxy, is bringing a new understanding of how stars are formed and travel throughout the Milky Way.
Jul 31st, 2015
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Astronomers say brown dwarfs behave more like planets than stars.
Jul 30th, 2015
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The merger of two black holes is one of the most sought-after observations of modern astronomy. The first observatories capable of directly detecting gravitational waves will begin observing the universe later this year. When these waves rolling in from space are detected on Earth for the first time, astrophysicists predict astronomers will 'hear', through these waves, five times more colliding black holes than previously expected.
Jul 29th, 2015
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Astronomers have long known that powerful cosmic winds can sometimes blow through galaxies, sweeping out interstellar material and stopping future star formation. Now they have a clearer snapshot of how it happens.
Jul 27th, 2015
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NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed the first near-Earth-size planet in the 'habitable zone' around a sun-like star. This discovery and the introduction of 11 other new small habitable zone candidate planets mark another milestone in the journey to finding another Earth.
Jul 23rd, 2015
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Astronomers have discovered jets of material ejected by still-forming young brown dwarfs. The discovery is the first direct evidence that brown dwarfs, intermediate in mass between stars and planets, are produced by a scaled-down version of the same process that produces stars.
Jul 23rd, 2015
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An international team of astronomers led by the University of Cambridge have detected the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in normal galaxies in the early Universe - less than one billion years after the Big Bang. The new observations will allow astronomers to start to see how the first galaxies were built up and how they cleared the cosmic fog during the era of reionisation.
Jul 22nd, 2015
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