This striking Hubble Space Telescope image shows the densely packed globular cluster known as NGC 2210, which is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The LMC lies about 157,000 light-years from Earth and is a so-called satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, meaning that the two galaxies are gravitationally bound. Globular clusters are very stable, tightly bound clusters of thousands … Read more
It was subsequently shown that the original Abell cluster is actually comprised of two independent galaxy clusters – a foreground group around 2.3 billion light-years from Earth, and another group at the greater distance of about 5.4 billion light-years from our planet. The more distant galaxy cluster, included in the Massive Cluster Survey as MCS … Read more
A star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is seen in exceptional detail in this image from Nov. 20, 2023, thanks to the Near-Infrared Camera instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sgr C region, along with some never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. … Read more
The latest image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. Image: Sagitarius C … Read more
This might raise the question of how an amateur astronomer could spot something like a supernova event before professional astronomers who have access to telescopes such as Hubble. The detection of supernovae is a mixture of skill, facilities, and luck. Most astronomical events happen over time spans that dwarf human lifetimes, but supernova explosions are … Read more
For millennia, musicians have looked to the heavens for inspiration. Now a new collaboration is enabling actual data from NASA telescopes to be used as the basis for original music that can be played by humans. Since 2020, the “sonification” project at NASA’s Chandra X-ray Center has translated the digital data taken by telescopes into notes and sounds. This process allows … Read more
NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will pair space-based observations with a broad field of view to unveil the dynamic cosmos in ways that have never been possible before. “Roman will work in tandem with NASA observatories such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory, which are designed to zoom in on … Read more
Key elements are coming together for NASA’s SPHEREx mission, a space telescope that will create a map of the universe like none before. NASA’s SPHEREx space telescope is beginning to look much like it will when it arrives in Earth orbit and starts mapping the entire sky. Short for Specto-Photometer for the History of the … Read more
The new images from the Euclid mission include a cluster of thousands of distant galaxies, demonstrating the spacecraft’s unique abilities. The Euclid mission, which will investigate the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, released its first five science images Tuesday, Nov. 7 The observatory, led by ESA (European Space Agency) with NASA contributions, is … Read more
Astronomers have discovered the most distant black hole yet seen in X-rays, using NASA telescopes. The black hole is at an early stage of growth that had never been witnessed before, where its mass is similar to that of its host galaxy. This result may explain how some of the first supermassive black holes in … Read more