Age is a relative thing. With our finite (and relatively short) lifespans, humans tend to think of anything older than 100 years as being “really old,” but when talking about astronomy, a century (or even a million years) is a drop in the bucket. So, when astronomers say they’ve discovered an incredibly old star, you …
Thanks to the nature of light and the fact that it can only move so fast, peering at objects far away means that astronomers can effectively look back in time. Well, “can” is a bit of an understatement since they’re quite literally forced to see things as they were, based on how far away the …
Spring may already be in our rear-view mirror but NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is still in the mood for things that bloom. In a new post, NASA showcases a recent snapshot of a galaxy called NGC 972 which was captured by the powerful telescope. The galaxy is in the midst of a growth spurt, with …
Like everything else in the universe, galaxies are born, live, and ultimately die, and thanks to incredibly powerful tools like the Hubble Space Telescope, we get to see various galaxies at virtually every stage of their lives. One of its newest observations was just published on the Hubble website and it features the dwarf starburst …
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is somewhere you wouldn’t want to be. We have it pretty easy here on Earth, orbiting our star and staying out of everyone’s way, but deep within the heart of our galaxy, a monster lurks. It’s a supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A* (that’s pronounced “A star”, …
Samsung would like to wish everyone a Happy Galaxy Day today. If you’re not aware, it’s a new holiday Samsung is kicking off this month — and the “day” part is a bit of a misnomer, because Samsung is actually running a month-long series of deals and discounts. All of which is in honor of …
Galaxies come in many different shapes and sizes, but you’d be hard pressed to find one more interesting than ESO 137-001. What the galaxy lacks in a flashy name it more than makes up for with an eye-catching appearance, looking like some kind of massive jellyfish floating through space. A blurry spiral trailed by long …
Black holes are some of the most interesting features of our universe, but they’re also not very well understood. Studying distant black holes in any great detail is very difficult due to the fact that nothing, including light, can escape their grasp once its gets too close. Now, a black hole sitting some 290 million …
Hubble, the trusty space telescope that has been delivering gorgeous views of the cosmos for decades now, just delivered another gift. In a new composite image made up of many individual photos, Hubble shows us the nearby Triangulum galaxy in incredible detail. No, seriously, the final image is so huge that you’d never want to …
Our Solar System is incredibly old by human standards. The Sun, sitting in the center, is thought to be just over 4.6 billion years old, which is an almost unfathomable amount of time to you and I. But it’s actually not all that impressive when it comes to stars. A new survey of one particular …
