news, journals and articles from all over the world.
Using first-of-their-kind observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, a University of Minnesota Twin Cities-led team looked more than 13 billion years into the past to discover a unique, minuscule galaxy that could help astronomers learn more about galaxies that were present shortly after the Big Bang.
Much like how wind plays a key role in life on Earth by sweeping seeds, pollen and more from one place to another, galactic winds – high-powered streams of charged particles and gases – can change the chemical make-up of the host galaxies they form in, simply by blowing in a specific direction.
Janice Lee, Chief Scientist at the International Gemini Observatory, leads the JWST Treasury Survey for the PHANGS (Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby Galaxies) collaboration to study how star formation affects the evolution of galaxies. These observations are providing new insights into how some of the smallest-scale processes in our Universe — the beginnings of star formation — impact the evolution of the largest objects in our cosmos: galaxies.
Scientists have discovered something unexpected about the Triangulum galaxy: In this satellite galaxy, a close companion of the much larger Andromeda galaxy, old and new stars occur in separate parts of the its structure, something not seen in galaxies like our own and so far not reporter for other satellite galaxies.
These are Hubble Space Telescope images of two massive clusters of galaxies. The artificially added blue color is translated from Hubble data that captured a phenomenon called intracluster light. This extremely faint glow traces a smooth distribution of light from wandering stars scattered across the cluster. Billions of years ago, the stars were shed from their parent galaxies and now drift through intergalactic space alone.
Researchers have been able to make some key determinations about the first galaxies to exist, in one of the first astrophysical studies of the period in the early Universe when the first stars and galaxies formed, known as the cosmic dawn.
Galactic superwinds – large outflows of gas created by a combination of supernova explosions and stellar winds – are closely connected to a galaxy’s earliest stages of development and evolution, including aspects like its size, shape, and even how many stars will eventually call it home.But while researchers have commonly observed these winds, very little is understood about the mechanism that drives them.
While observing a newly-dormant galaxy using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), scientists discovered that it had stopped forming stars not because it had used up all of its gas but because most of its star-forming fuel had been thrown out of the system as it merged with another galaxy. The result is a first for ALMA scientists. What’s more, if proven common, the results could change the way scientists think about galaxy mergers and deaths.
A collaboration led by scientists at Nagoya University in Japan has investigated the nature of dark matter surrounding galaxies seen as they were 12 billion years ago, billions of years further back in time than ever before.
In an enormous new image, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope reveals never-before-seen details of the galaxy group called “Stephan’s Quintet.” The close proximity of this group gives astronomers a ringside seat to galactic mergers and interactions.
A flurry of bright white galaxies is stirring up this scene – captured in high resolution by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Known as galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, the group of galaxies is also bending and warping the light from more distant galaxies behind them, stretching and repeating their appearances. Webb’s near- and mid-infrared imaging – and highly detailed data known as spectra – will allow future researchers to finely catalog the precise compositions of galaxies in the early universe, which may ultimately reshape our understanding of how galaxies changed and evolved over billions of years.
As telescopes have become more advanced and powerful, astronomers have been able to detect more and more distant galaxies. These are some of the earliest galaxies to form in our universe that began to recede away from us as the universe expanded.
While using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to observe large star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), scientists discovered a turbulent push-and-pull dynamic in the star-forming region, 30 Doradus. Observations revealed that despite intense stellar feedback, gravity is shaping the molecular cloud, and against scientific odds, is driving the ongoing formation of young, massive stars. The observations were presented today in a press conference at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Pasadena, California, and are published in The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA)— an international observatory co-operated by the US National Science Foundation’s National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)—have observed a significant amount of cold, neutral gas in the outer regions of the young galaxy A1689-zD1, as well as outflows of hot gas coming from the galaxy’s center. These results may shed light on a critical stage of galactic evolution for early galaxies, where young galaxies begin the transformation to be increasingly like their later, more structured cousins. The observations were presented today in a press conference at the 240th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Pasadena, California, and will be published in an upcoming edition of The Astrophysical Journal (ApJ).
A thorough understanding of galaxy evolution depends in part on an accurate measurement of the abundance of metals in the intergalactic medium – the space between stars – but dust can impede observations in optical wavelengths.
Post-starburst galaxies were previously thought to scatter all of their gas and dust—the fuel required for creating new stars—in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, new data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveals that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, after their supposed end, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly-concentrated, turbulent gas. But contrary to expectation, they’re not using it to form stars.
Early massive galaxies—those that formed in the three billion years following the Big Bang—should have contained large amounts of cold hydrogen gas, the fuel required to make stars. But scientists observing the early Universe with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Hubble Space Telescope have spotted something strange: half a dozen early massive galaxies that ran out of fuel.
A new study from scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) suggests that previously displaced gases can re-accrete onto galaxies, potentially slowing down the process of galaxy death caused by ram pressure stripping, and creating unique structures more resistant to its effects.
Hubble astronomers say they confirmed that an oddball
galaxy mysteriously lacks dark matter—the glue that holds stars and gas together in galaxies. This confirmation challenges the standard ideas of how researchers think galaxies work.
A team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has completed the first census of molecular clouds in the nearby Universe. The study produced the first images of nearby galaxies with the same sharpness and quality as optical imaging and revealed that stellar nurseries do not all look and act the same. In fact, they’re as diverse as the people, homes, neighborhoods, and regions that make up our own world.
Three dozen dwarf galaxies far from each other had a simultaneous “baby boom” of new stars, an unexpected discovery that challenges current theories on how galaxies grow and may enhance our understanding of the universe. Galaxies more than 1 million light-years apart should have completely independent lives in terms of when they give birth to new stars. But galaxies separated by up to 13 million light-years slowed down and then simultaneously accelerated their birth rate of stars, according to a Rutgers-led study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
A five-year quest to map the universe and unravel the mysteries of “dark energy” is beginning officially today, May 17, at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona. To complete its quest, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) will capture and study the light from tens of millions of galaxies and other distant objects in the universe.
New Brunswick, N.J. (April 21, 2021) – Rutgers University–New Brunswick astrophysicist John P. (Jack) Hughes is available for interviews on a supernova (exploding star) discovery published today in the journal Nature. The discovery, made with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, features…
A multiwavelength campaign of observations gave astronomers a “big picture” view of the region near the galaxy M87’s supermassive black hole and also the distant regions it affects.
Watch the live webcast on this page on Wednesday, April 7 at 7 pm ET.
The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has produced a new image showing details of the magnetic fields in the region closest to the supermassive black hole at the core of the galaxy M87, providing clues about how its powerful jets are produced.
Researchers have channeled the universe’s earliest light – a relic of the universe’s formation known as the cosmic microwave background – to solve a missing-matter mystery and learn new things about galaxy formation. Their work could also help us to better understand dark energy and test Einstein’s theory of general relativity by providing new details about the rate at which galaxies are moving toward us or away from us.
Astronomers using the VLA took advantage of the gravitational lensing provided by a distant cluster of galaxies to detect an even more-distant galaxy that probably is the faintest radio-emitting object ever found.
New Brunswick, N.J. (Feb. 22, 2021) – Rutgers University–New Brunswick Professor Kristen McQuinn is available for interviews on the upcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, its potential scientific impact and the leap forward it will provide in our understanding of the…
Host Melissa Hoffman of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory talks about how ALMA discovered a young galaxy and what it tells us about our own Milky Way.”
Before DESI, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, can begin its 5-year mission from an Arizona mountaintop to produce the largest 3D sky map yet, researchers first needed an even bigger 2D map of the universe.
Astronomers have discovered the most distant quasar yet found. The quasar is seen as it was only 670 million years after the Big Bang, and is providing valuable clues about how huge black holes and their host galaxies formed in the early Universe.
Comparing data from VLA sky surveys made some two decades apart revealed that the black hole-powered “engines” at the cores of some distant galaxies have launched new, superfast jets of material during the interval between the surveys.
New VLA images show how the crowded environment of a cluster of galaxies affects the individual galaxies, helping astronomers better understand some of the complex details of such an environment.
ALMA telescope conducts largest survey yet of distant galaxies in the early universe
New Brunswick, N.J. (Oct. 15, 2020) – Blakesley Burkhart’s childhood days spent volunteering at a science museum and watching the Discovery Channel and sci-fi shows sparked her love of science and fascination with the stars. “These were the beginning years…
Winners in NRAO’s VLA 40th Anniversary Image Contest are from around the world, and their works illustrate a fascinating variety of celestial objects. Entries combined observational data from the VLA with data from optical, infrared, and X-ray telescopes, and from computer simulations.
Rutgers astronomers have produced the most advanced galaxy simulations of their kind, which could help reveal the origins of the Milky Way and dozens of small neighboring dwarf galaxies. Their research also could aid the decades-old search for dark matter, which fills an estimated 27 percent of the universe. And the computer simulations of “ultra-faint” dwarf galaxies could help shed light on how the first stars formed in the universe.
A new image from the VLA dramatically reveals the extended magnetic field of a spiral galaxy seen edge-on from Earth.
A cosmic measurement technique independent of all others adds strong evidence pointing to a problem with the current theoretical model describing the composition and evolution of the Universe.
Despite a temporary shutdown of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument in Arizona – which was in its final stages of testing in preparation to begin mapping millions of galaxies in 3D when the pandemic struck – a variety of project tasks are still moving forward.
After examining a dozen types of suns and a roster of planet surfaces, Cornell University astronomers have developed a practical model – an environmental color “decoder” – to tease out climate clues for potentially habitable exoplanets in galaxies far away.
Irvine, Calif., April 20, 2020 – Though mighty, the Milky Way and galaxies of similar mass are not without scars chronicling turbulent histories. University of California, Irvine astronomers and others have shown that clusters of supernovas can cause the birth of scattered, eccentrically orbiting suns in outer stellar halos, upending commonly held notions of how star systems have formed and evolved over billions of years.
Just like we orbit the sun and the moon orbits us, the Milky Way has satellite galaxies with their own satellites. Drawing from data on those galactic neighbors, a new model suggests the Milky Way should have an additional 100 or so very faint satellite galaxies awaiting discovery.
Members of the media are invited to attend a mid-April dedication of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is scheduled to begin its five-year mission to construct a 3D map of the universe in the coming months.
Iowa State astronomers have revealed that a well-known, nearby galaxy has a rare double-nucleus structure. Their paper reporting the discovery is now online and has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal.
Studies with the VLA indicate that roughly half of the massive black holes in dwarf galaxies are not in the centers of those galaxies. This gives astronomers new insights into the conditions in which similar black holes formed and grew in the early history of the Universe.
Galaxies lead a graceful existence on cosmic timescales. Over millions of years, they can engage in elaborate dances that produce some of Nature’s most exquisite and striking grand designs. Few are as captivating as the galactic duo known as NGC 5394/5, sometimes nicknamed the Heron Galaxy. This image, obtained by the Gemini Observatory of NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, captures a snapshot of this compelling interacting pair.
Galaxies lead a graceful existence on cosmic timescales. Over millions of years, they can engage in elaborate dances that produce some of Nature’s most exquisite and striking grand designs. Few are as captivating as the galactic duo known as NGC 5394/5, sometimes nicknamed the Heron Galaxy. This image, obtained by the Gemini Observatory of NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, captures a snapshot of this compelling interacting pair.
VLA observations reveal large-scale magnetic field that spirals outward into a galaxy’s extended halo.
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