Posted on

Galaxies Grew Quickly and Early On in the Universe

The behaviour of galaxies in the early Universe attracts a lot of attention from researchers. In fact, everything about the early Universe is under intense scientific scrutiny for obvious reasons. But unlike the Universe’s first stars, which have all died long ago, the galaxies we see around us—including our own—have been here since the early days.

Current scientific thinking says that in the early days of the Universe, the galaxies grew slowly, taking billions of years to become what they are now. But new observations show that might not be the case.

Continue reading “Galaxies Grew Quickly and Early On in the Universe”
Posted on

A Galaxy has been Found That’s as Bright as a Quasar… But it’s Not a Quasar

Astronomers have found a new type of galaxy that is very old, very distant and very bright in ultraviolet light. This is somewhat an unusual combination, and so when this bright galaxy was first detected, the team of researchers who found it first thought it was a quasar. But detailed study revealed it was actually a galaxy with some other unusual features, which contributes to its brightness: it is busy with star formation, it has almost no dust.

As of now, this galaxy – with the license plate-type name of BOSS-EUVLG1 – appears to be the only one of its kind.   

Continue reading “A Galaxy has been Found That’s as Bright as a Quasar… But it’s Not a Quasar”
Posted on

Gaia has Already Given Us 5 New Insights Into the Milky Way

The ESA's Gaia mission is currently on a five-year mission to map the stars of the Milky Way. Gaia has found evidence for a galactic collision that occurred between 300 million and 900 million years ago. Image credit: ESA/ATG medialab; background: ESO/S. Brunier.

The European Space Agency launched the Gaia mission in 2013. The mission’s overall goal was to discover the history of the Milky Way by mapping out the positions and velocities of one billion stars. The result is kind of like a movie that shows the past and the future of our galaxy.

The mission has released two separate, massive data sets for researchers to work through, with a third data release expected soon. All that data has spawned a stream of studies into our home galaxy.

Recently, the ESA drew attention to five new insights into the Milky Way galaxy. Allof these discoveries directly stemmed from the Gaia spacecraft.

Continue reading “Gaia has Already Given Us 5 New Insights Into the Milky Way”
Posted on

Hubble Photo of Globular Cluster NGC 6441, One of the Most Massive in the Milky Way

The Hubble Space Telescope has delivered another outstanding image. This one is of NGC 6441, a massive globular cluster in the constellation Scorpius. It’s one of the most massive ones in the Milky Way, and the stars in it have a combined mass of 1.6 million solar masses.

Continue reading “Hubble Photo of Globular Cluster NGC 6441, One of the Most Massive in the Milky Way”
Posted on

Hubble Looked as Far Back in Time as it Could, and Still Couldn’t See the First Generation of Stars in the Universe

Astronomers don’t know exactly when the first stars formed in the Universe because they haven’t been observed yet. And now, new observations from the Hubble Space Telescope suggest the first stars and galaxies may have formed even earlier than previously estimated.

Why? We *still* haven’t seen them, even with the best telescope we’ve got, pushed to its limits.

Continue reading “Hubble Looked as Far Back in Time as it Could, and Still Couldn’t See the First Generation of Stars in the Universe”