ESA’s Herschel space observatory has discovered an extremely distant galaxy making stars more than 2000 times faster than our own Milky Way. Seen at a time when the Universe was less than a billion years old, its mere existence challenges our theories of galaxy evolution. Artist’s impression of starburst galaxy HFLS3. The galaxy appears [continue reading]
Staring at a small patch of sky for more than 50 hours with the ultra-sensitive Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), astronomers have for the first time identified discrete sources that account for nearly all the radio waves coming from distant galaxies. They found that about 63 percent of the background radio emission [continue reading]
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have shown for the first time that bursts of star formation have a major impact far beyond the boundaries of their host galaxy. These energetic events can affect galactic gas at distances of up to twenty times greater than the visible size of the galaxy – altering [continue reading]
A team of astronomers has used the new ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) telescope to pinpoint the locations of over 100 of the most fertile star-forming galaxies in the early Universe. ALMA is so powerful that, in just a few hours, it captured as many observations of these galaxies as have been made by [continue reading]
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has found the farthest supernova so far of the type used to measure cosmic distances. Supernova UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson after American President Woodrow Wilson, exploded more than 10 billion years ago. This is a Hubble Space Telescope view of supernova SN UDS10Wil, nicknamed SN Wilson that exploded over 10 [continue reading]
The rare Green Pea galaxies discovered by the general public in 2007 could help confirm astronomers’ understanding of reionization, a pivotal stage in the evolution of the early Universe, say University of Michigan researchers. A montage of the six Green Pea galaxies that University of Michigan astronomy researchers studied. Image Credit: Anne Jaskot Reionization [continue reading]