The galaxy

Ballet of Interacting Galaxies The pair of galaxies NGC 1531/2, engaged in a spirited waltz, is located about 70 million light-years away towards the southern constellation Eridanus (The River). The...

May 5 is Space Day, and with the film “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” opening, we look at some real star power in our daily lives, the Milky Way and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The first direct image of the hellish environment surrounding a supermassive black hole was just released by an international collaboration of researchers. As part of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project, the team used a global array of telescopes to probe the fiery disk of material swirling around the gargantuan black hole at the center of the galaxy M87.

Einstein’s theory of gravity may have to be rewritten, after a team of astronomers at the University of St Andrews discovered a 10-million-light-year-wide ring of small galaxies moving away from us much faster than predicted.

A panorama from Cygnus (at top, setting in the western sky in the evening), across the sky overhead in Perseus, Auriga and Taurus, and down into Orion, Canis Major, and Puppis (at bottom, low in the southern sky at midnight). This panorama covers about 200° of galactic longitude, from 60° in Cygnus to 260° in Puppis and takes in the entire northern swath of the Milky Way visible in autumn and early winter in the northern hemisphere, from the summer Milky Way at top to the winter Milky Way at…

A different astronomy and space science related image is featured each day, along with a brief explanation.

European Southern Observatory image of the grand design galaxy M100.

“Hidden Galaxy IC 342 from Kitt Peak”