By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from the environmental influence of larger objects. The galaxies, located in the direction of NGC 300, were found to contain only very old stars, supporting the theory that events in the early Universe cut star formation short in the smallest galaxies.
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After ten years of construction, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is less than one year away from the start of its transformational movie of our changing night sky. In preparation for this monumental production, the observatory has just successfully completed a series of full-system tests using an engineering test camera. This accomplishment sets the stage for the last step of Rubin construction: installation of the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera (LSSTCam) — the largest digital camera in the world.
Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star apart as it went. When the shockwave reached the star’s surface, it punched through, generating a brief, intense pulse of X-rays and ultraviolet light that traveled outward into the surrounding space. About 350 years later, that pulse of light has reached interstellar material, illuminating it, warming it, and causing it to glow in infrared light.
AURA, and the organizations behind Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope, GMTO & TIO, acknowledge the findings of the U.S. ELT External Evaluation Panel Report, presented by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) on 8 December 2024.
For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around 600 million years after the big bang, but is also similar to what our Milky Way galaxy’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this time period are significantly more massive. Nicknamed the Firefly Sparkle, this galaxy is gleaming with star clusters — 10 in all — each of which researchers examined in great detail.
In a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a galaxy named for its resemblance to a broad-brimmed Mexican hat appears more like an archery target.
For four years the NEID (rhymes with fluid) spectrograph, mounted on the WIYN 3.5-meter Telescope at U.S. National Science Foundation Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), a Program of NSF NOIRLab, has been delivering on one of its main science goals — to confirm exoplanet candidates from other exoplanet missions and characterize both newly confirmed and known planets.
Researchers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map nearly six million galaxies across 11 billion years of cosmic history, allowing them to study how galaxies clustered throughout time and investigate the growth of the cosmic structure. This complex analysis of DESI’s first-year data provides one of the most stringent tests yet of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
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.
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.
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