We finally know exactly how dark deep space is
Illustration showing NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in deep spaceNASA, APL, SwRI, Serge Brunier (ESO), Marc Postman (STScI), Dan Durda We finally know just how dark it is in deep space.…
Illustration showing NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft in deep spaceNASA, APL, SwRI, Serge Brunier (ESO), Marc Postman (STScI), Dan Durda We finally know just how dark it is in deep space.…
JWST images of little red dot galaxiesJosephine F.W. Baggen et al. (2024) Strangely bright galaxies spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), called “little red dots”, may have more…
When galaxy clusters collided, the dark matter (blue) sailed ahead of the normal matter (orange)W.M. Keck Observatory/Adam Makarenko When two enormous clusters of galaxies collided billions of years ago, their…
How do enormous black holes merge?Jurik Peter/Shutterstock Supermassive black holes sometimes merge, but for decades, astrophysicists have not known how. Now, we may finally have a solution in the form…
Galaxies like Andromeda have a supermassive black hole at the centreNASA/JPL-Caltech Supermassive black holes appear to be more powerful than our theories suggest, blasting the gas that surrounds galaxies much…
An artist’s impression of the very distant undead galaxyESO/M. Kornmesser A strange, zombie-like galaxy has been spotted in the distant universe. This undead galaxy stopped forming stars for 20 million…
This red blob is a distant galaxy with strange propertiesNASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI The “little red dots” discovered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) pose a cosmic conundrum.…
This story is part of our Cosmic Perspective series, in which we confront the staggering vastness of the cosmos and our place in it. Read the rest of the series…
Five years ago, a galaxy 300 million light-years away got a lot brighter in telescopes, radiating ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light out into space. This year, the resurgent galaxy started…
Euclid’s image of the star-forming region Messier 78Messier 78 ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre (CEA Paris-Saclay), G. Anselmi; CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO or ESA Standard Licence The Euclid…