Artist’s impression of ZF-COSMOS-20115, a galaxy that stopped making new stars and rapidly turned into a compact red galaxy.
The recipe book for galaxy formation may need to be rewritten after the discovery of a massive galaxy that stopped making new stars early in the Universe's history.
Artist’s impression of a quasar shining through a galaxy’s ‘super halo’ of hydrogen gas.
A. Angelich (NRAO/AUI/NSF)
Astronomers are surprised by what they're finding out about galaxies that formed in the early days of our universe, now that sensitive telescopes allow direct observation, not the inference of old.
Most modern spiral galaxies, such as NGC 1300, are thought to have loads of dark matter in their outer regions.
NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)
So where did all the dark matter come from?
Untangling the history of the Milky Way.
Understanding how the billions of stars in our galaxy formed and evolved is the subject of a huge galactic archaeology project.
The Andromeda Galaxy.
Astronomers have taken a forensic approach to study the stellar halo of a galaxy to reveal hidden secrets on how such galaxies were formed.
The Milky Way as seen from Earth.
Astronomers are making new discoveries about our galaxy thanks to a more detailed map of the Milky Way.
Spiral galaxy NGC 3953 is a veritable star making machine, but why do some galaxies stop forming new stars?
Galaxies are supposed to be the place where new stars are formed. So what causes some to stop this stellar production line?
The new discovery: The C-shaped “wide angle tail galaxy” (pink) surrounded by the galaxies of the Matorny-Terentev cluster (white).
The find by citizen scientists of at least 40 galaxies in a cluster more than a billion light years away is the astronomical equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.
The High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) was instrumental in determining the origin of cosmic rays.
A new study suggests that mysterious high energy cosmic rays might originate from the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Artist’s depiction of the newly discovered Jupiter-like planet orbiting the star HD 32963.
Jupiter had a big influence on how our solar system's planets formed. New research – led by a high school student – tried to nail down how rare Jupiter analogs really are in other planetary systems.
Elliptical galaxy SDSS J162702.56+432833.9 could be full of life.
A new model suggests that elliptical galaxies are more likely to be habitable than spiral galaxies like our own. Does that mean we're a freak event and elsewhere is teeming with life?
What secrets will space reveal?
Why the Breakthrough Listen project is a step in the right direction in our hunt for life beyond Earth.
Astronomers from around the world identify their favourite images sent back to Earth by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Elliptical galaxies, like this one, are burnt out and no longer making stars.
Judy Schmidt and J Blakeslee (Dominion Astrophysical Observatory)
What happens to a galaxy when it runs out of the stuff needed to forge new stars?
Looking for dark matter in the galaxy collisions such as in Abell 2744, dubbed Pandora’s Cluster.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/ITA/INAF/J.Merten et al, Lensing: NASA/STScI; NAOJ/Subaru; ESO/VLT, Optical: NASA/STScI/R.Dupke
Scientists know so much about dark matter apart from what it is exactly. But are they getting any closer?
Observations of the dusty cloud G2 as it approaches and then swings around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
The best observations yet of a mysterious gas cloud that was heading for the black hole at the hear of our Milky Way reveal it may have more stellar origins.
Gemini North observatory, on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, shoots a laser beam into the night sky to create an ‘artificial star’, part of a process that helps astronomers remove blurring from any images of galaxies.
Gemini Observatory and Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy
A supermassive black hole has been found in an ultracompact dwarf galaxy – the smallest galaxy known to contain such a massive black hole. This finding, published today in Nature, suggests that supermassive…
The Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy completes a rotation every 250 million years, astronomers have found. Using NASA’s Hubble…
The speed at which spiral galaxies spin determine whether they are fat and bulging or whether they are shaped like flat discs…
Virgo consortium: the web that holds the galaxies together.
According to cosmologists, galaxies are joined together by filaments, quite literally. These filaments form the cosmic web and are made of mostly dark matter, many stars and some gas. Observing these filaments…