AI Reveals Black Holes and Galaxies Grow up Together
Astronomers recently found that the growth of a galaxy and the growth of the supermassive black hole at its centre have a lot in common. By training a computer to study and model the data, scientists were able to confirm this decades-old theory. This is a concept illustration: Machine learning…
Gamma-ray Bursting with Surprises
For the first time, astronomers found surprising clues of a ‘kilonova’ – a huge explosion sparked by the clash of neutron stars when studying the “post-credits-scene” of a long gamma-ray burst. But what makes this kilonova discovery surprising? How did two different teams of astronomers discover the same surprising results? Let’s explore! This artist's…
Gemini North catches a beautiful pax-de-deux
Using the Gemini North telescope in Hawai'i, astronomers have just caught a spectacular image of a cosmic event around 60 million light-years away from us in the direction of the Virgo constellation. The image is of two spiral galaxies, NGC 4568 and NGC 4567 are in the process of merging…
This Universe’s most massive star just said “cheese!”
Located in the Tarantula Nebula at about 160,000 light-years from us, R136a1 is the most massive star we know across the whole Universe. Using the Gemini South telescope in Chile, astronomers recently managed to get the sharpest image ever made of the gigantic star. The image suggests that maybe such…
What’s like The Sun and The Earth – only Redder and Heavier?
Astronomers have discovered a super-Earth – planets that are much like our Earth but heavier – near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star, only 37 light-years from us. That's really really close to our planet in astronomical terms! Schematic diagram of the newly discovered Ross 508 planetary system.…
Explosions help us measure distances in the Universe
How do astronomers measure large distances in the far away corners of the Universe? An international team led by Maria Dainotti – an Assistant Professor at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) – has just found a new way to do it. Conceptual image of this research: using Gamma…
Artificial intelligence helps astronomers see farther and sharper
To understand the evolution of the Universe, astronomers use many complex equations. Because there are some things that we do not know for sure yet, scientists have to estimate some of the values in these equations – such values come from different simulations, and the best ones match real-life observations…
A Comet Breaking-Up
For the first time, astronomers captured images of a strange rocky comet, breaking apart as it went closer to the Sun. Meet 323P/SOHO – a comet that orbits the Sun nearly every years, just like the Earth goes around the Sun every year. Astronomers have discovered just a few like…
A cosmic fairy tale and a discovery
Have you ever heard of the beautiful story of Tanabata? It is much loved and celebrated in Asian cultures such as the Japanese – and has a lot to do with a recent discovery. Tanabata is the story of two lovers, Orihime and Kengyu, who can only meet at the seventh…
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…
