An ancient merry-go-round
Astronomers have found that very old galaxies can twirl, too. There are signs of rotation in a galaxy which existed just 500 million years after the Big Bang. This is the earliest galaxy with possible rotation! This ancient galaxy rotates more slowly than modern galaxies – maybe it is on…
Citizen scientist makes an ultra-cool discovery
Using data from the NOIRLab's Community Science and Data Center, ace citizen scientist Frank Kiwy discovered 34 ultracool dwarf binary systems in the Sun’s neighbourhood. This means that we now know twice as many of these systems than before! Illustration of an ultracool dwarf with a companion white dwarf. Credits:…
A fossil galaxy in the outskirts of Andromeda
An international team of astronomers found a dwarf galaxy in the outskirts of the Andromeda Galaxy – located over million light-years from us. The ultra-faint dwarf galaxy, Pegasus V, was spotted by a very attentive amateur astronomer looking at data in an image from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys. He…
How the James Webb Space Telescope lets us see the first galaxies in the universe
Versão portuguesa disponível aqui It has been an exciting week with the release of breathtaking photos of our universe by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Images such as the one below give us a chance to see faint distant galaxies as they were more than 13 billion years ago.…
Scientists discover how first quasars in universe formed
Versão portuguesa disponível aqui The mystery of how the first quasars in the universe formed - something that has baffled scientists for nearly 20 years - has now been solved by a team of astrophysicists whose findings are published in Nature. The existence of over 200 quasars powered by supermassive…
