First Stars Formed in Universe 180 Million Years After Big Bang
A group of researchers led by Judd Bowman, an astronomer at Arizona State University, recently made a remarkable discovery by spotting the impressions of the earliest stars in the universe. Soon after the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago, the universe expanded, cooled and became very dark. Stars and other cosmological objects hadn’t formed yet. […]
Amateur Astronomer Images First Light From Supernova
An amateur astronomer strikes gold when, for the first time, he was able to image the initial burst of optical light produced by a supernova millions of light years from Earth. Victor Buso of Rosario, Argentina is a locksmith by trade and a self-taught astronomer. On September 20, 2016, Mr. Buso was trying out a new […]
They’re Sure It Exists, But Scientists Still Unable to Detect Dark Matter
Back in 1933, Caltech astronomer and astrophysicist Fritz Zwicky was observing the Coma cluster, a large group of galaxies located some 321 million light years away in the Coma Berenices constellation. He noticed the speed of the galaxies rotating within the cluster was much faster than the quantity of its mass he had calculated. According to […]
Hubble Spots Mysterious Vortex on Neptune
NASA says images gathered by the Hubble Space Telescope, a little over a month ago, confirm the existence of a mysterious dark vortex in Neptune’s atmosphere. While vortices on Neptune have been spotted several times before, dating back to the 1989 flyby of ‘Voyager 2’, this recent Hubble observation marks the first time the phenomenon […]
January 2016 Science Images
Scientists Spot Cosmic Bartender
For the first time, an international team of researchers has discovered a cosmic cocktail maker hurtling through space at a speed of around 21.8 kilometers per second. The researchers discovered that Comet Lovejoy is pumping out large amounts of the same kind of alcohol (ethyl) used in alcoholic beverages and a type of sugar into […]
Astronomers Detect a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Astronomers have discovered the most distant galaxy ever detected, gaining new insight into the early beginnings of our universe. Identified as EGS-zs8-1, the international team of astronomers measured its exact distance at 13 billion light years away from Earth. That means that light from the galaxy now reaching Earth was produced back when the universe […]
Unique Carbon-Based Molecule Found in Deep Space May Indicate Origins of Life
Astronomers from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, and the University of Cologne found an unusual carbon-based molecule called isopropyl cyanide in a gas cloud some 27,000 light years away. Those involved with the discovery say the finding suggests the type of complex molecules needed for life may have […]
Hubble Helps Astronomers Solve 40 Year-Old Mystery
Astronomers finally have been able to solve a 40-year mystery thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope. For over four decades astronomers have been trying to find the origin of the Magellanic Stream, a long ribbon of hydrogen gas clouds that stretch almost halfway around our own Milky Way galaxy. The Magellanic Stream is connected to […]