A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an unprecedented in-depth look at the nearly 100-billion-mile-diameter debris disk encircling Vega.
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U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee staffers, along with representatives from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. Embassy, visited the AURA/NOIRLab facilities in Chile last week.
The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago.
100 years ago Edwin Hubble discovered decisive evidence that other galaxies existed far beyond the Milky Way. This image, captured by the Gemini North telescope, one half of the International Gemini Observatory, features a portion of the enormous Perseus Cluster, showcasing its ‘island Universes’ in awe-inspiring detail. Observations of these objects continue to shed light not only on their individual characteristics, but also on cosmic mysteries such as dark matter.
Solar filaments, dramatic thread-like structures visible in the Sun’s chromosphere, may hold the key to understanding one of the most powerful phenomena in space weather: Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has provided a dramatic and colorful close-up look at one of the most rambunctious stars in our galaxy, weaving a huge spiral pattern among the stars.
For millennia, the night sky has inspired us to ponder profound questions: How did our Universe begin? Where do we come from? Are we alone? Our curiosity drives us to undertake ambitious projects in search of answers. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is one such big project: made possible by the collaboration of thousands of people from across the globe and across decades, to make their dream a reality. Their stories, and their efforts to complete this remarkable telescope and launch it into space, were captured by the stunning documentary and IMAX experience, “Deep Sky,” created by award-winning and Oscar-nominated director, Nathaniel Kahn.
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory celebrated a landmark moment in astronomy and astrophysics with the dedication of the Simonyi Survey Telescope on 4 October 2024. With the Simonyi family as guests of honor, Rubin Observatory recognized the pivotal role of Charles and Lisa Simonyi’s philanthropy in advancing construction of the Observatory and supporting research that will soon transform our understanding of the Universe.
In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black hole at the core of a huge galaxy seems to cause stars to erupt along its trajectory. The stars, called novae, are not caught inside the jet, but apparently in a dangerous neighborhood nearby.
Observations using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) confirm astronomers’ expectation that early-Universe quasars formed in regions of space densely populated with companion galaxies. DECam’s exceptionally wide field of view and special filters played a crucial role in reaching this conclusion, and the observations reveal why previous studies seeking to characterize the density of early-Universe quasar neighborhoods have yielded conflicting results.
Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this region the Extreme Outer Galaxy due to its location more than 58,000 light-years away from the Galactic Center. (For comparison, Earth is approximately 26,000 light-years from the center.)
Maui, Hawaii – The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, designed, built, and operated by the NSF National Solar Observatory (NSO), achieved a major breakthrough in solar physics by directly mapping the strength of the magnetic field in the solar corona, the outer part of the solar atmosphere that can be seen during a total eclipse. This breakthrough promises to enhance our understanding of space weather and its impact on Earth’s technology-dependent society.
The universe is a dynamic, ever-changing place where galaxies are dancing, merging together, and shifting appearance. Unfortunately, because these changes take millions or billions of years, telescopes can only provide snapshots, squeezed into a human lifetime. However, galaxies leave behind clues to their history and how they came to be. NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will have the capacity to look for these fossils of galaxy formation with high-resolution imaging of galaxies in the nearby universe.
When astronomers got their first glimpses of galaxies in the early universe from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, they were expecting to find galactic pipsqueaks, but instead they found what appeared to be a bevy of Olympic bodybuilders. Some galaxies appeared to have grown so massive, so quickly, that simulations couldn’t account for them. Some researchers suggested this meant that something might be wrong with the theory that explains what the universe is made of and how it has evolved since the big bang, known as the standard model of cosmology.
Universidad de Chile Dr. Mónica Rubio obtained her Ph.D. degree in Astrophysics and Spatial Techniques at the Universitè de Paris, France. She is full professor at the Astronomy Department of the Universidad de Chile and an expert astrophysicist in millimeter-radioastronomy. She is Vice President of the International Astronomical Union (2024-2030). She was President of Division […]
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