Astronomers have announced the discovery of one of the largest planetary systems ever found. Astronomers recently discovered a seventh planet orbiting around dwarf star called KIC 11442793. Two different groups of researchers studying the same planetary system believe this could be a record. The astronomers say that the planetary system has some similarities compared to […]
The Planck telescope is a deep space scientific instrument that has been in use for four a half years. During the telescope’s mission, it was able to determine that the universe is about 80 million years older than scientists previously thought. The telescope also made some other interesting discoveries such as spotting an 80,000,000°C gas […]
An international team of astronomers has detected what they say is the furthest galaxy away from our Milky Way galaxy ever discovered. Astronomers say that the newly discovered galaxy is 30 billion light years away from the Earth. The distant galaxy was discovered using the Hubble Space Telescope and then confirmed using the Keck Observatory […]
Nothing is ever as tranquil as it seems. This image is pretty and has lots of fun, trippy colors. But all of that variation is being produced by gas, dust and other matter as whole galaxies fall into a supermassive black hole. Created from Hubble data, the image shows the cosmic tug-of-war going on in the Perseus Cluster of Galaxies 230 million light years away.
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Even though it might not look like much when it’s so far away, the Moon is pretty huge. In fact, if it was a little closer—as close as the ISS for example—it would monopolize the entire sky.
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Astronomers have discovered a very unusual planet roaming freely through the galaxy. The planet is about 80 light years from Earth and is believed to be about six times more massive than Jupiter. The interesting thing about this planet is that it’s floating freely in space with no parent star.
This isn’t the first time an orphan planet with no sun has been discovered, but this is the first time that astronomers and scientists are absolutely sure it’s a planet. In the past, the astronomers were unable to determine if these free-floating objects were failed stars known as “brown dwarfs” or “orphan planets.”
“We have never before seen an object free-floating in space that that looks like this,” team leader Michael Liu of the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii at Manoa said. “It has all the characteristics of young planets found around other stars, but it is drifting out there all alone. I had often wondered if such solitary objects exist, and now we know they do.”
The planet is known as PSO J318.5-22 and was discovered using its heat signature by the Pan-STARRS 1 wide-field survey telescope in Hawaii. Astronomers say most of the energy from the planet is emitted infrared wavelengths. The astronomers say that the planet has properties similar to those of gas-giant planets found orbiting young stars. The astronomers believe that the so-called “Ronin planet” is probably associated with the collection of young stars called the Beta Pictoris group and was somehow kicked out of its orbit.
[via NBC News]
A team of astrophysicists have made an exciting however complex discovery a mere 170 light years away. In their own words, it’s "the first evidence of a water-rich rocky planetary body" outside of our own solar system to have evidence of water. It’s the "rocky" bit that makes it Earth-like.
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Even if the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s 33-year-old Very Large Array doesn’t sound familiar, it probably looks familiar: It was the backdrop to Jodie Foster’s work in Contact. Wonderfully, Foster serves as the narrator of this awesome mini-doc about the VLA, which was recently rebuilt from the inside out in a massive reconstruction project.
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Observatories don’t just gaze into the endless starry abyss above our heads; sometimes that’s not enough. Sometimes they shoot righteous 40-watt lasers into the great beyond too. Obviously it looks awesome, and this stellar timelapse showcases exactly how awesome. (Spoilers: very awesome.)
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That top image is pretty, but the only way to see this incredible combination of dust and gas is to take in the whole image below. Holy crap, right? This picture, which was created in 2005 using Hubble data and digitally assigned colors, shows the Eagle Nebula
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