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Latest News About Stars and Galaxies
Stars are giant, luminous spheres of plasma. Galaxies consist of stars, stellar remnants, dust, gas, and dark matter, bound together by gravity. Learn more about stars and galaxies.
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A companion star pushing through expelled dust and gas around a red giant star created a spiral structure.
Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter Array have discovered a surprising spiral structure and spherical shell surrounding the red giant star R Sculptoris. The shape was probably caused by a hidden companion star orbiting the red giant.
This stunning space wallpaper shows the Helix nebula, lies 650 light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius.
A glowing planetary nebula looks like a giant cosmic eye.
What a difference 50 years can make. The European Southern Observatory got its start using giant film slides – blurry and inexact by modern standards. Today, high tech digital telescopes and sensors can capture dramatically more detail.
These shape-shifting galaxies have taken on the form of a giant mask. The icy blue eyes are actually the cores of two merging galaxies, called NGC 2207 and IC 2163, and the mask is their spiral arms in this cool space wallpaper.
Look up to see celestial wonders this week.
The find could help explain why bigger galaxies have bigger central black holes.
These cosmic conundrums will challenge your knowledge of our home galaxy.
The image depicts the galaxy NGC 7090, which is 30 million light-years away.
This new instrument on a telescope in Chile will map distant galaxies to attempt to unravel the mystery of dark energy.
This new space wallpaper of the reflection nebula Messier 78 was captured using the Wide Field Imager camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at the La Silla Observatory, Chile.
Here's what humanity would have to do to reach a star in less than 100 years.
In 1771, comet hunter Charles Messier cataloged 45 objects easily confused with comets. Over time that list grew to 110 nebulae, galaxies and star clusters. Amateur astronomers can observe them all in a single night around the vernal equinox (March).
The night sky's autumn constellations follow the summer stars so closely they can be seen well before the air gets chilly.
This cool space wallpaper shows the bright, young star left of center gives NGC 1999 its brightness.
Photographer John Eklund captured over 260,000 images to create this stunning video of the majestic landscapes in and magnificent skies above the pacific northwest of the United States.
The result is a fun offshoot of the online Galaxy Zoo project.
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