Fast and Furious starring Dual Quasars
Astronomers describe 'cosmic noon' as a dramatic period in the history of our Universe when it was buzzing with galaxy mergers and furious star formation. Observing these mergers has been relatively rare and challenging since the Universe was very young - only three billion years old! Astronomers found evidence of…
AI’s Hunt for the First Stars
Once upon a time, dinosaurs roamed our planet Earth - and even though we never met one, the fossils tell us their story. With the help of artificial intelligence (AI), an international team of astronomers have found the “fossils” of the very first stars in the Universe! They discovered that…
Playing Connect-the-dots Around a Baby Star
Have you ever played connect-the-dots in a magazine? At first, it looks like a mess - but after you figure out how to connect the points, a pattern appears out of the chaos. Recently, astronomers noticed a mysterious spiral pattern hiding around a baby star. But instead of ‘dots’, the…
Blast from the Past!
Behold! the traces of the first-ever supernova recorded in history! A ring of glowing remains of the first-ever recorded supernova, a white dwarf star that exploded more than 1800 years ago. Credit: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab).…
A Bird? A Plane? A Tadpole?
On a sunny day with a blue sky filled with clouds, try stepping out into your garden or go for a walk. Now look at the clouds above. Use your imagination and try to make out as many interesting patterns or shapes that you can see — like a sky…
Surprise Surprise! Stars Moving into Another Galaxy
Life is unpredictable, and you never know when the next exciting adventure comes knocking at your door. Sometimes it might require you to pack your bags and move to another town or a new country altogether. Guess what! You are not alone: stars do it, too! Striking new evidence for…
High – Speed Baby Star Tantrums
Little fights over toys or candies are quite common in human households with siblings. In most cases, parents settle those adorable little disputes by sharing things. It is an entirely different story when the siblings in picture here are two baby stars and their home is a 'star forming cloud’…
Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars, How We Wonder WHERE You Are
Have you ever wondered why only fewer and fewer stars appear in the night sky, especially if you live in a city? A recent study by NOIRLab’s educational project ‘Globe at Night’, shows how light pollution is increasing fast, taking away the majestic view of our starry night sky. This…
Counting A Sky Full Of Stars
Have you tried counting the stars in a clear-night sky? How many bright objects can you identify? The Dark Energy Camera (DECam), built on the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, captured the most detailed picture of the galactic plane of our Milky Way as seen from the southern sky. And astronomers…
How to Directly Weigh A Protoplanetary Disk?
What if we could ‘directly’ weigh a planet-forming disk without even visiting one? A group of astronomers from Japan have found a new technique to do so and it turns out to be the best method of all. Observational image of the protoplanetary disk around TW Hydrae showing the distributions of solid…
