When Galaxies Collide
This interacting pair of galaxies is included in Arp’s catalog of peculiar galaxies as number 148. Arp 148 is the staggering aftermath of an encounter between two galaxies, resulting in a ring-shaped galaxy and a long-tailed companion.
Galactic Growth is slow and steady
The Herschel Infrared Space Observatory discovered that galaxies do not always need to collide with each other to drive vigorous star birth. The finding overturns a long-held assumption and paints a more stately picture of how galaxies evolve.
Best Astronomy Pictures of the Year 2011
Is now the third year of the Royal Observatory’s competition to uncover the best photographs of stars, planets, galaxies and more. They received nearly 800 entries from astronomers around the world – that’s nearly double the number they received last year! Picture above: Hunting Moon by Jean-Baptiste Feldmann (France) -People and Space: runner-up
The Universe may have been Born Spinning
Physicists and astronomers have long believed that the universe has mirror symmetry, like a basketball. But recent findings from the University of Michigan suggest that the shape of the Big Bang might be more complicated than previously thought, and that the early universe spun on an axis.
The ATLAS3D galaxies project
Astronomer Edwin Hubble gave us our first basic galaxy classification. Using photographic plates, Hubble derived a simplistic system based on three visually known structures: elipitical, spiral and lenticular. For many decades, this served as a standard. Now the ATLAS3D Project is calling a different tune.
Clues of Dark Matter in Galactic smash-up
This image of super-cluster Abell 2744 captures the wreckage of a collision between four smaller galaxy clusters. New data let astronomers map the positions of three different kinds of matter in the system, which may offer clues to how dark matter behaves when it smacks into ordinary matter.
How unique is the Milky Way?
To find out, a group of researchers led by Stanford University astrophysicist Risa Wechsler compared the Milky Way to similar galaxies and found that just four percent are like the galaxy Earth calls home.
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How the Universe is measured
This diagram (above) illustrates two ways to measure how fast the universe is expanding. In the past, distant supernovae, or exploded stars, have been used as “standard candles” to measure distances in the universe, and to determine that its expansion is actually speeding up.
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Black Holes from the Dawn of the Universe
The “Dark Ages” of the universe started about 400,000 years after the big bang, after matter cooled down enough for neutral atoms to form.
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Collage of nearby galaxies
To celebrate the one-year anniversary of the launch of NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, or WISE, the mission team has put together this image showing just a sample of the millions of galaxies that have been imaged by WISE during its survey of the entire sky.
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