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Damn. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what stargazers call a globular cluster — a spherical grouping of gravitationally bound celestial bodies, swirling about deep in the inky blackness of space. [Hi-res available here] More »
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Tomorrow, astronomers and physicists from around the word will convene in Tucson, Arizona to discuss the Event Horizon Telescope Project — a global network of 50 radio telescopes that together could soon enable us to photograph the black hole at the center of our galaxy. More »
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You can learn a lot about a galaxy based solely on its color. How old it is, whether it's still producing stars, the age of the stars themselves — these are all questions that a galaxy's color can help answer. More »
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Unfortunately, you won't be able to order a drink there. It's actually a gigantic, bar-shaped formation of stars found right at the center of our home galaxy. And it rotates like nothing else in the Milky Way. More »
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Billions of years ago, when the universe was still in its infancy, the formation of stars is believed to have occurred at a much faster rate than it does today. Now, a recent discovery by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope (HST) suggests that the universe's earliest galaxies may have been pumping out stars even faster than we thought. More »
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The Bolshoi Simulation is a massive, incredibly detailed model of everything, providing a comprehensive simulation of the universe's 14 billion year history. Scientists are now exploring the simulation, and we've got some of the most breathtaking results of their efforts. More »
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We didn't yet have the technology to notice, but Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, threw one hell of a tantrum a few hundred years ago. It's the only explanation for mysterious x-ray anomalies. More »
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A nearby dwarf galaxy, Sagittarius, has delivered two "punches" to our Milky Way galaxy. These impacts are what gave the Milky Way its spiraling arms. And we may take another hit soon. More »
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The whole point of white dwarfs is that they're the remains of stars not big enough to go supernova. Or so we thought. Many of these stars are held together by their super-fast spins... and slowing down could mean an explosion. More »
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This image taken by NASA's Wise Satellite is in the infrared spectrum, meaning it can reveal the light that is normally hidden behind thick, dark clouds of gas. But some clouds are so dark that no light can get through. More »
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Many stars form in giant groups known as open clusters, which are crucial for the galaxy's development. There should be about 30,000 clusters in the Milky Way, but we've only ever found 2,500. Now, you can raise that number to 2,596. More »
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This breathtaking panorama combines the two hemispheres of the Milky Way galaxy into one. On top, we can see the northern stars from the Canary Islands, while on bottom we can see the southern sky from Chile's Atacama desert. More »
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Between those bizarre structures, the impossible colors up in the night sky, and the fact that this photo was apparently taken in the middle of a busy star cluster, how can this not be from some far distant alien world? More »
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The Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years in diameter, but that doesn't mean we're necessarily able to see everything our galaxy has to offer. The trouble comes from this thick nearby dust cloud, which blocks the stars behind it. More »
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You'd be forgiven for having that reaction to this photo of the Ames Monument, a pyramid in Wyoming built to commemorate the transcontinental railroad. But that strange, unearthly light is just the beginning of the weirdness on display here. More »
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This is the galaxy NGC 6744, located about 30 million light-years away. It just so happens that this galaxy looks pretty much exactly like what our own galaxy would look like...except this galaxy is twice as big as ours. More »
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This star may not look like much, but in 1923 it changed our understanding of the universe forever. It showed us that the Milky Way wasn't a lonely island universe, but instead just one of billions and billions of galaxies. More »
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One of the problems of living inside our galaxy is that it can be devilishly tricky figuring out exactly what the Milky Way actually looks like. We might have discovered a whole new arm of our galaxy...and it's very strange. More »
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These buildings are three of the structures that make up the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, located in Chile's Atacama Desert. In the skies above them are the constellations Orion, Canis Major, and the Southern Cross, among many others. More »
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Photographer Terje Sorgjerd (who previously shot a beautiful time-lapse of aurora borealis) captured these awesome shots of the Milky Way from Pico del Teide on the Canary Islands. Watch as a Saharan sandstorm backlights the cosmic firmament. More »
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We've got to come up with a better name that ‘Milkomeda' to describe what's going to eventually happen when the Milky Way and Andromeda merge. More »
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This absolutely stunning image was taken in Spain's Canary Islands by astrophotographer Juan Carlos Casado. The image combines nine different photos and reveals the band of our Milky Way galaxy in a way our unaided eyes never could. More »
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The recent exoplanet spotting by NASA's Kepler probe revealed there might be more than a million Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Now a new estimate says as many as 1 out of every 37 sun-like stars has an Earth-like world. More »
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We recently discovered that gigantic gamma ray bubbles were balanced above and below the center of the Milky Way, stretching out 25,000 light-years in each direction. And now we might finally know where these mysterious bubbles come from. More »
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This amazing image shows just why we call our galaxy the Milky Way, as the dazzling white band of star clusters and nebulae arcs across the night sky in the Swiss Alps. A NASA astronomer explains just how much of our galaxy (and others) we can see in this one photo... More »
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This amazing image of the center of our galaxy is the work of three different space telescopes - Hubble, which photographs objects in the visual wavelengths, Chandra, which looks at X-rays, and Spitzer, which investigates the infrared. More »
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Based on how gravity affects the gases at the edge of our galaxy, we should have a satellite galaxy located about 26,000 light-years away...except nobody's ever seen it. This might be because it's composed almost entirely of dark matter. More »
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Behold this gorgeous time-lapse video of the Milky Way rising in the night sky, captured by Justin Majeczsky at a gorgeous Lake Tahoe vantage point. Look closely and you can see Sagittarius! More »
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The Sun was born 4.6 billion years ago inside a nebula that likely gave birth to a thousand other stars. So what happened to the Sun's siblings? The search continues, but they could be practically anywhere in the Milky Way. More »
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It's not quite the impossible planet, but it's certainly very improbable. A planet has been discovered around a type of ancient star that scientists once believed couldn't support planets. Even more incredibly, the planet formed outside our galaxy. More »
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The moon, stars, comets and planets aren't the only ones lighting up the night sky. Gegenschein glows in the sky every night – it's usually just too faint to be seen. More »
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Physicist Axel Mellinger pieced together this image of the night sky out of 3,000 individual images. Mellinger traveled 26,000 miles, taking images in South Africa, Texas and Michigan, then added data from two space probes. Yes, it's hardcore. More »
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In an unholy blending of space porn and Felicia Day, the Spitzer Science Center has released a funny and informative PSA on colliding galaxies. In this mock behind-the-scenes video, Day explains to an explosions-loving filmmaker why we shouldn't fear Andromeda. More »
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The center of our galaxy shines in greater detail than ever before, in this new composite image from NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory. (Click to enlarge.) The whole gamut of stellar evolution is here, from bright young stars to black holes. More »
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It's no wonder the aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind chose the Devil's Tower National Monument as the place to make first contact with humanity. The sky above offers a clear and startling vision of the cosmos. More »
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This time-lapse fish-eye-lens photo of the night sky over Texas is incredible, thanks to a red-lens filter that allows us to see the galactic core of the Milky Way rising up at the end. [Gizmodo] More »
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It's high time Earth got smacked with a comet. These firey globs of doom tend to come in cycles, raining down on our planet about once every 36 million years. Using a computer simulation of how our solar system moves through the Milky Way, astrobiologists at the UK's Cardiff University found that we pass through the densest part of the galaxy every 35 to 40 million years — they call it a "bounce." It turns out that comet impacts on Earth follow a similar cycle, increasing in frequency just about every 36 million years, give or take. More »
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This is part of the first 3D map of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Over 200 thousand objects are included in the map, which was made up of images from a telescope in the Canary Islands that took hydrogen emission-sensitive pictures of the night sky. The result is that the brighter areas show "hotter" spots where stars are being born. Image via Institute of Astronomy/University of Cambridge. Milky Way Mapped in 3D [Discover News] More »
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