Science News

A newly discovered form of circle dancing is perplexing astronomers; not due to its complex choreography, but because it's unclear why the dancers – dwarf galaxies – are dancing in a ring around the much larger Andromeda Galaxy.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-01-curious-cosmic-choreography-small-galaxies.html#jCp

Using gravitational "lenses" in space, University of Utah astronomers discovered that the centers of the biggest galaxies are growing denser – evidence of repeated collisions and mergers by massive galaxies with 100 billion stars.

New Hubble observations indicate that our galaxy, the Milky Way, will physically collide and merge with the Andromeda galaxy... in about 4 billion years. This simulation shows how we think this event will unfold, taking about 2 billion years for the two to merge.

The European Space Agency’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of infrared radiation.

Astronomers from the University of Bonn in Germany have discovered a vast structure of satellite galaxies and clusters of stars surrounding our Galaxy, stretching out across a million light years. The work challenges the existence of dark matter, part of the standard model for the evolution of the universe.

Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy

New observations made with ESO’s Very Large Telescope are making a major contribution to understanding the growth of adolescent galaxies.

By studying how distant starburst galaxies are clustered together, astronomers have found that they eventually become so-called giant elliptical galaxies -- the most massive galaxies in today's universe.

"When I had satisfied myself that no star of that kind had ever shone before, I was led into such perplexity by the unbelievability of the thing that I began to doubt the faith of my own eyes." -Tycho Brahe...

Washington DC (SPX) Jan 16, 2012 - Astronomers using the partially completed ALMA observatory have found compelling evidence for how star-forming galaxies evolve into 'red and dead' elliptical galaxies, catching a large group of gala...

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a cluster of galaxies in the initial stages of construction — the most distant such grouping ever observed in the early universe.

Amateur scientists have made a effervescent discovery: The Milky Way Galaxy is bubbling like a glass of champagne. Visit http://science.nasa.gov/ for more.

Articles about ASTRONOMY: http://www.scoop.it/t/science-news?tag=astronomy

Discovery hints at an unexpected cohort of baby star systems.

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The collision of two clusters of galaxies 5 billion light-years away could help astronomers better understand...

The H.E.S.S. telescope system detectspotentially Earth-threatening high-energy rays from the starburst region of a galactic system outside the Milky Way. Between 2005 and 2008, astrophysicists used the H.E.S.S.