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Artist’s illustration of dwarf galaxy with active galactic nucleus

DESI Uncovers 300 New Intermediate-Mass Black Holes Plus 2500 New Active Black Holes in Dwarf Galaxies

Within the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument’s early data, scientists have uncovered the largest samples ever of intermediate-mass black holes and ...
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A large, black circle representing a black hole occupies the right third of the frame in this illustration. Thick, clumpy orange streaks arc above and below it, essentially surrounding it. The top arc extends down to the lower left and then curves around in front of the black hole to form a disk that is tilted toward the viewer. Near the inner edge of the disk, several bright, whiter spots have blue filaments looping above them, representing flares. The words “Artist’s Concept” appear in the bottom left corner in gray.

Webb Reveals Rapid-Fire Light Show From Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

The supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way appears to be having a party, complete with a ...
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Artistic representation of the largest radio jet in the early Universe

Gemini North Teams Up With LOFAR to Reveal Largest Radio Jet Ever Seen in the Early Universe

From decades of astronomical observations scientists know that most galaxies contain massive black holes at their centers. The gas and ...
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A large galaxy is at center, and a significantly smaller galaxy is to its left. The large galaxy, nicknamed the Bullseye, is mostly face-on, but the top appears slightly tilted away. It has several rings. Its circular core is bright white at the very center, but light yellow overall. Going outward, there are gaps between the rings. The core is surrounded by two slightly lighter yellow rings, which also appear to be overlapping. The next ring is slightly more transparent and yellow. The two or three rings that are farther out are bluer, sometimes with blue clumps. The widest ring is also blue, but also the most transparent. At 9 o’clock is a small dwarf galaxy. It is about the same size as the yellow core of the Bullseye. The dwarf galaxy is blue, with many dots. It looks like the edge of the Bullseye might touch the dwarf galaxy. Both galaxies are set on the black background of space, which is dotted with a range of galaxies in different shapes, colors, and sizes, along with one foreground star at left.

Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy with Nine Rings

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings ...
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NASA's Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

NASA’s Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the ...
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Three images side by side of ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from the environmental influence of larger objects.

DECam and Gemini South Discover Three Tiny ‘Stellar-Ghost-Town’ Galaxies

By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf ...
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A good comparison of the ComCam engineering test camera with the LSSTCam can be seen in the figure. The two have the same resolution and sensitivity, but the LSSTCam covers 21 times more area on the sky in every image. A single test engineering image from the very first night of the ComCam campaign, before any detailed tuning or more precise alignment of the optical system, is shown in the context of the coverage that will be provided by the LSSTCam: every one of the 21 squares in the teal wire frame is equivalent to another ComCam, all observing the sky at the same time. As ComCam already covers an impressive area equivalent to two full Moons, the promise of the full LSSTCam is incredible.

Testing, Testing! NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Completes Comprehensive System Tests With Flying Colors

After ten years of construction, NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is less than one year away from the start of its transformational ...
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Three rows show Webb images of the same region taken on three different dates. The top row is labeled August 19, 2024. The middle row is labeled September 16, 2024. The bottom row is labeled September 30, 2024. Each row shows two images split by a vertical black bar where there is no data. Each image is speckled with dozens of white stars, some showing Webb’s signature 8-point diffraction spikes, against the black background of space. The images also show tightly packed, glowing red filaments that resemble muscle fibers or wood grain. While the background stars are the same in every row, the filaments change noticeably. In the top row, the filaments extend horizontally from upper left to lower right. In the middle and bottom rows, the filaments extend from lower left to upper right, and seem to shift slightly downward in position, with the last the lowest.

NASA’s Webb Reveals Intricate Layers of Interstellar Dust, Gas

Once upon a time, the core of a massive star collapsed, creating a shockwave that blasted outward, ripping the star ...
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A frame split horizontally down the middle. At left is a galaxy cluster and background galaxies, showing thousands of overlapping objects at various distances. The background is black. The galaxies’ colors vary, including white, pink, orange, and blue. Most galaxies appear as ovals or dots. Just above center is a bright white oversized oval, a supergiant elliptical galaxy. Around it are many thin, long orange or pink arcs. These are background galaxies that appear stretched and distorted. To the bottom right is the outline of a small box. On the right side is a zoomed in view of this area. There are two smaller circular outlines flanking a larger central oval outline, labeled Firefly Sparkle galaxy. Within it is a long line, pointing from bottom left to top right with 10 circular star clusters in pink, purple, and blue. The circled galaxy to the bottom left is labeled Companion 1 and looks like a bright red dot. At top right, the circled galaxy labeled Companion 2 is lighter red and surrounded by a red disk.

Found: First Actively Forming Galaxy as Lightweight as Young Milky Way

For the first time, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that not only existed around ...
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A two panel image. The top image is Webb’s view of the Sombrero galaxy, the bottom image is Hubble’s view. In the Webb view, the galaxy is a very oblong, blue disk that extends from left to right at an angle (from about 10 o’clock to 5 o’clock). The galaxy has a small bright core at the center. There is clear inner disk that has speckles of stars scattered throughout. The outer disk of the galaxy is whiteish-blue, and clumpy, like clouds in the sky. In the Hubble view, the galaxy is an oblong, pale white disk with a glowing core over the inner disk. The outer disk is darker and clumpy.

Hats Off to NASA’s Webb: Sombrero Galaxy Dazzles in New Image

In a new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, a galaxy named for its resemblance to a broad-brimmed Mexican ...
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Artist’s Illustration of Exoplanet HD 86728 b showing a planet orbiting a bright star

NEID Earth Twin Survey Delivers On Its Goal to Push the Limits of Exoplanet Discovery

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 ...
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The sparkling band of the Milky Way Galaxy backdrops the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, located at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) near Tucson, Arizona.

DESI Provides Best Test Yet of How Gravity Behaves at Cosmic Scales

Researchers have used the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) to map nearly six million galaxies across 11 billion years of ...
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