Category Archives: "Science"

  • Home
  • Archive by Category "Science"
    • (Page 2)
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
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 ...
Read More
A two-panel image split down the middle vertically. At the left is the Vega disk as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope. The disk is perfectly circular, and at the center is a black spot blocking out the bright glow of a star. Closer to the center, the disk is white. Radial striations extend out from the center, giving a ripple effect to the disk like the end of a sausage casing. The outer edge of the circular disk is blue. At the right, the Webb image of the disk is an orange colored, smooth, fuzzy halo. The inner disk is whiter toward the center, and there is darker lane between the inner disk and the more orange outer disk. The disk is also perfectly circular, with a black circle in the center due to lack of data from saturation.

NASA’s Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega

A team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson used NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes for an ...
Read More
Two spiral galaxies take the shape of a colorful beaded mask that sits above the nose. The galaxy at left, IC 2163, is smaller, taking up a little over a quarter of the view. The galaxy at right, NGC 2207, takes up half the view, with its spiral arms reaching the edges. IC 2163 has a bright orange core, with two prominent spiral arms that rotate counter clockwise and become straighter towards the ends, the left side extending almost to the edge. Its arms are a mix of pink, white, and blue, with an area that takes the shape of an eyelid appearing whitest. NGC 2207 has a very bright core. Overall, it appears to have larger, thicker spiral arms that spin counter clockwise. This galaxy also contains more and larger blue areas of star formation that poke out like holes from the pink spiral arms. In the middle, the galaxies’ arms appear to overlap. The edges show the black background of space, including extremely distant galaxies that look like orange and red smudges, and a few foreground stars.

‘Blood-Soaked’ Eyes: NASA’s Webb, Hubble Examine Galaxy Pair

The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, ...
Read More
NGC 1270: A Galactic Archipelago is shown as glittering stars on a deep black background with large fuzzy halos of yellow

Gemini North Captures Galactic Archipelago Entangled in a Web of Dark Matter

100 years ago Edwin Hubble discovered decisive evidence that other galaxies existed far beyond the Milky Way. This image, captured ...
Read More
Graphic showing a close up of a section of the Sun (in grey) with several filaments in color overlaid on it.

Harnessing AI for Space Weather Forecasting with NSF GONG Data

Solar filaments, dramatic thread-like structures visible in the Sun’s chromosphere, may hold the key to understanding one of the most ...
Read More
A bright binary star surrounded by a colorful nebula on the black background of space.

NASA’s Hubble Sees a Stellar Volcano

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has provided a dramatic and colorful close-up look at one of the most rambunctious stars in ...
Read More
An artist's concept looks down into the core of the galaxy M87, which is just left of center and appears as a large blue dot. A bright blue-white, narrow and linear jet of plasma transects the illustration from center left to upper right. It begins at the source of the jet, the galaxy’s black hole, which is surrounded by a blue spiral of material. At lower right is a red giant star that is far from the black hole and close to the viewer. A bridge of glowing gas links the star to a smaller white dwarf star companion immediately to its left. Engorged with infalling hydrogen from the red giant star, the smaller star exploded in a blue-white flash, which looks like numerous diffraction spikes emitted in all directions. Thousands of stars are in the background.

NASA’s Hubble Finds that a Black Hole Beam Promotes Stellar Eruptions

In a surprise finding, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have discovered that the blowtorch-like jet from a supermassive black ...
Read More
More
AURA Astronomy AURA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization        © 2025 Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy