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Heron survey fishes out detail in ghostly galaxy outskirts Astronomers have completed the largest survey to date of the faint outskirts of nearby galaxies, successfully testing a low-cost system for exploring these local stellar systems. R. Michael Rich of the University of California, Los Angeles led an international team carrying out a survey for the Haloes and Environments of Nearby Galaxies (HERON) collaboration, published in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The team find that the diameters of the galactic outskirts—the haloes—appear to correlate with the brightness and type of galaxy. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Going against the flow around a supermassive black hole At the center of a galaxy called NGC 1068, a supermassive black hole hides within a thick doughnut-shaped cloud of dust and gas. When astronomers used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study this cloud in more detail, they made an unexpected discovery that could explain why supermassive black holes grew so rapidly in the early Universe. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Image: Foreground asteroid passing the Crab Nebula When astronomers use the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study the deep sky, asteroids from our solar system can leave their marks on the captured pictures of far-away galaxies or nebulae. But rather than be annoyed at the imprinted trails in Hubble images, astronomers realised they could use them to find out more about the asteroids themselves. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

2I/Borisov: Interstellar comet with a familiar look A new comet discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov is an outcast from another star system, yet its properties are surprisingly familiar, a new study led by Jagiellonian University researchers shows. The team’s findings are being published in Nature Astronomy on 14 October 2019. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astronomers use giant galaxy cluster as X-ray magnifying lens Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have used a massive cluster of galaxies as an X-ray magnifying glass to peer back in time, to nearly 9.4 billion years ago. In the process, they spotted a tiny dwarf galaxy in its very first, high-energy stages of star formation. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Astrophysicist suggests light might be a problem for life on a planet orbiting a black hole Jeremy Schnittman, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has taken what he describes as a tongue-in-cheek look at the issues that might stand in the way of life existing on a planet orbiting a black hole. He has written a paper outlining his thoughts on the idea posted on the arXiv preprint server. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Hubble snaps spiral’s profile The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope sees galaxies of all shapes, sizes, luminosities and orientations in the cosmos. Sometimes, the telescope gazes at a galaxy oriented sideways—as shown here. The spiral galaxy featured in this Hubble image is called NGC 3717, and it is located about 60 million light-years away in the constellation of Hydra (the Sea Serpent). phys.org Go to SourceRead More →

Open cluster ASCC 123 investigated in detail Using the Galileo National Telescope, astronomers have conducted a high-resolution spectroscopic study of the open cluster ASCC 123 as part of the Stellar Population Astrophysics (SPA) project. Results of the new research, presented in a paper published October 4 on arXiv.org, provide important information about fundamental parameters of 17 candidate members of ASCC 123, shedding more light on the properties of this little-studied cluster. phys.org Go to SourceRead More →