Ask astronomers about dark matter and one of the things they talk about is that this invisible, mysterious ‘stuff’ permeates the universe. In particular, it exists in halos surrounding most galaxies. The mass of the halo exerts a strong gravitational influence on the galaxy itself, as well as on others in the neighborhood. That’s pretty … Read more
It’s a record that has been broken multiple times over the past two years alone, and one that we expect to see broken again soon. Astronomers using the newly operational James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have announced the discovery of what appears to be the most distant galaxy yet. If this sounds familiar, it’s already … Read more
What little we know of dark matter comes from calculations based on the glow of surrounding galaxies. The further away we look, however, the dimmer that starlight gets, making it harder to see the subtle influence of this most mysterious of forces. Now a collaboration between astronomers from Japan and the US has found a … Read more
There’s something very odd about this image from the Hubble Space Telescope. If you look closely, you can see two almost-mirror image, orange-colored galaxies, seemingly connected by a long filament. Fascinatingly, that’s not two galaxies at all, but one, named SGAS J143845+145407. It just appears to be two, thanks to the way the gravity of … Read more
Just a week after its first images were shown to the world, the James Webb Space Telescope may have found a galaxy that existed 13.5 billion years ago, a scientist who analyzed the data said Wednesday. Known as GLASS-z13, the galaxy dates back to 300 million years after the Big Bang, about 100 million years … Read more
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has already expanded humanity’s vision further into time and space than ever before, giving a breathtaking sneak peek of the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the early Universe to date. Now, NASA has just unveiled five more stunning full-color images captured by the most ambitious telescopes humanity has … Read more
When we see pictures of galaxies outside the Milky Way, what we’re usually looking at is primarily the light of their stars. But stars are far from the only ingredient that makes up a galaxy. Think of stars as the chunks of vegetables in the galactic soup. The broth, then, in which they float, is … Read more
How many of what kinds of stars live in other galaxies? It seems like a simple question, but it’s notoriously hard to pin down because astronomers have such a difficult time estimating stellar populations in remote galaxies. Now a team of astronomers has completed a census of over 140,000 galaxies and found that distant galaxies … Read more
We all know that a humongous black hole exists at the center of our galaxy. It’s called Sagittarius A* (Sgr A* for short) and it has the mass of 4 million suns. We got to see a radio image of it a few weeks back, showing its accretion disk. So, we know it’s there. Astronomers … Read more
Out in the dark depths of space, our models of the Universe get messy. A new study looking at the ultra-diffuse dwarf galaxy AGC 114905 has revived a controversial theory (or more accurately a hypothesis) of gravity, and given us more questions than answers about what’s making our galaxies tick. It all starts with dark … Read more