Elliptical Galaxy
A60s – A Galactic Heartbeat
Astronomers can measure how much the center of galaxies changes over time, taking the heartbeat of these cosmic islands.
Galaxy
Galaxy
AstroNews
Probing the furthest Universe to understand how spiral galaxies formed.
A new paper accepted for publication this month has highlighted how spiral galaxies came to form in the early Universe. By using the power of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), a team lead by Roberto Maiolino has individuated the mechanism through which galaxies gather stell...
AstroNews
The Very Hungry Supermassive Black Hole
We all get the munchies, but when you’re a supermassive black hole (SMBH) your hunger might have dire consequences. And just like that an SMBH has outgrown its galaxy and jumped to the top of the heavyweight objects in the universe.
10 Features
The Universe in 10 Features: 7. Elliptical Galaxies
Our 7th feature is about elliptical galaxies. Elliptical galaxies are the other main class of galaxies we find in our universe. They have a spherical stellar distribution, meaning simply that their stars’ orbits are not in a plane any more, and instead have random orientations.
10 Features
The Universe in 10 Features: 6. Spiral Galaxies
As we’ve seen in the previous vlog, spiral Galaxies started forming from the primordial protogalaxies about 11 billion years ago. The formation of spiral galaxies is important because it happened at the peak of population II stars formation and allowed for planets to form.
10 Features
The Universe in 10 Features: 5. Proto-galaxies
Another important feature in the history of Universe are the proto-galaxies. In the last 30 years we were able to observe only a few dozen of these proto or primeval galaxies, which mostly looked like shapeless blobs with an intense UV emission.
AstroNews
The Seven Wonders of the Milky Way
The Seven Wonders of the Milky Way are: The Sagittarius stream, a long, complex, structure made of stars that wrap in polar orbit around the Galaxy. It consists of tidally stripped stars from the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy. The multi-planet planetary system around the millisecond pulsar ...
AstroNews
A Dance of Black Holes
When galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centre merge after a long spiralling dance around each other. Several studies have been conducted to underpin everything that happens from the beginning of the galaxy mergers to the SMBHs becoming one; the final details of this p...
Andromeda
How big is the biggest galaxy in the Universe?
If by big we mean physical dimension, the largest known galaxy is most likely IC1101. IC1101 is gargantuan even among galaxies; it’s a super elliptical galaxy with a diffuse stellar halo that to extends to at least 1.4 million light years. The Milky Way’s halo by comparison extends to about 100.0...
Dark Energy
Stars of the Future
If the universe continues expanding forever, how long until it’s too diffused to allow star formation? How many generations of stars will that mean the universe has? How will the elemental make-up of these late stars be different and what effects will that have?