February 18, 2013 IC 883, the remnant of two interacting galaxies Image Credit: NASA, ESA, the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration, and A. Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville/NRAO/Stony Brook University) IC 883 (also known as Arp 193) is the bright remnant of two interacting galaxies located some 300 million light-years away toward the constellation of Canes [continue reading]
Lurking at the centers of most galaxies are supermassive black holes that can weigh anywhere from one million to one billion times as much as the Sun. New research, published today in the Astrophysical Journal, shows that these black holes are growing at much larger rates than had previously been thought possible. Even the black hole [continue reading]
The further away you look, the further back in time you see. Astronomers use this fact to study the evolution of the Universe by looking at nearby and more distant galaxies and comparing their features. Hubble is particularly well suited for this type of work because of its extremely high resolution and its position [continue reading]
One of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way almost got away with theft. However, new simulations convicted the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) of stealing stars from its neighbor, the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). And the crucial evidence came from surveys looking for something entirely different – dark objects on the outskirts of the [continue reading]
Scientists at the University of Cambridge have used cutting-edge infrared surveys of the sky to discover a new population of enormous, rapidly growing supermassive black holes in the early Universe. The black holes were previously undetected because they sit cocooned within thick layers of dust. The new study has shown however that they are [continue reading]
Almost thirty years ago the Infrared Astronomy Satellite, IRAS, discovered that the Universe contained many fabulously luminous galaxies, some of them more than a thousand times brighter than our own galaxy, but which are practically invisible at optical wavelengths. The reason for their optical dimness is that their bright light comes not from stars, [continue reading]