Hubble photographs the farthest-ever view of the universe – it’s amazing

Prepare to be blown away with this short video and the images from Hubble. We are a pale blue dot.     And the original story from NASA: Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of Hubble photographs taken of a patch of sky. The XDF is …

Astronomers discover a star-creating galaxy that sheds light on the galactic cooling problem

Massive galaxy cluster spawns more than 700 stars a year A newly discovered cluster of galaxies, more than 5 billion light years from Earth…is among the most massive clusters of galaxies in the universe, and produces X-rays at a rate faster than any other known cluster. It also creates new stars at an “unmatched” pace of more …

Astronomers discover black hole with 140 trillion times more water than Earth

Two teams of astronomers have discovered the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe. The water, equivalent to 140 trillion times all the water in the world’s ocean, surrounds a huge, feeding black hole, called a quasar, more than 12 billion light-years away. “The environment around this quasar is very unique …

Astronomers discover a close new planet – covered in oceans of magma

In a surprise find, astronomers have discovered a planet possibly covered with oceans of magma “right around the corner.” Thirty-three light years away, “we have a sub-Earth-sized planet that’s slightly larger than Mars and essentially right around the corner, at least on a cosmic scale,” said Kevin Stevenson, a planetary scientist now at the University of Chicago UCF-1.01 …

All 786 known planets, to scale

All 786 known planets, to scale. “This” (tiny gray box) is our solar system. The rest of these orbit other stars and were only discovered recently. Most of them are huge because these are the kind we learned to detect first, but now we’re finding that small ones are actually more common. We know nothing …

Scientists watch a black hole devour a star

Back when single-celled organisms ruled Earth, a gigantic black hole lurking quietly at the center of a distant galaxy dismantled and devoured a star. On Wednesday, astronomers reported that they watched the whole thing unfold over a period of 15 months starting in 2010, the first time such an event had been witnessed in great …

Do galaxies form like snowflakes? Winner of Space Lab competition to find out

The Space Lab competition from YouTube invited young scientists to submit an experiment for the chance to have it performed by NASA aboard the International Space Station. From among thousands of entrants, six regional winners have been chosen. In North America, Emerald Bresnahan of Plainville, Massachusetts, was chosen for her Snowflakes in Space experiment. Emerald …

The possible Galactic Core of our Universe (photo)

A globular cluster is a spherical collection of stars (like our Sun) that orbits a galactic core as a satellite. Globular clusters are very tightly bound by gravity, which gives them their spherical shapes and relatively high stellar densities toward their centers. Here is one of those globular clusters: Messier 9, seen here in a …

A new energy form unknown to science, Dark Energy, is expanding the Universe

The year was 1998 and two highly competitive groups of astronomers were each rushing toward the same goal: they hoped to hunt down the effects of gravitational braking in the universe. Ever since astronomers had accepted the idea of the Big Bang, they had been out hunting for its subsequent cosmic deceleration. While the Big Bang …

The stars as viewed from the International Space Station

Multitudinous stars but what is really awesome are the shots or Earth. The atmosphere glows faintly while the surface is lined with an array of lights, lightning storms, and mountains. Makes me feel like we are an advanced civilization, even a planet in a Star Wars movie (that’s Coruscant for you geeks). Timelapse videos depicting …