The galaxies are already very large, with billions upon billions of stars orbiting supermassive black holes. But that’s not where their influence ends. The vast, spherical charge of gas surrounds the galaxy, reaching farther than the main population of stars, somewhat like the atmosphere of a galaxy. Hubble observations from …
Read More »
Astronomers have discovered a mysterious stream of ancient stars on the distant edges of the galaxy – a strange star race so unlike any we’ve seen before, they may well be the last of their kind. This unusual collection of stars, called the ‘Phoenix current’, after the constellation Phoenix in …
Read More »
Spiral galaxies look pretty and orderly, with most of their stars and gas confined to a carefully arranged disk in swirling spiral arms. But there is much more to a galaxy than we can see, as a new image of invisible phenomena skillfully demonstrates. The image shows a galaxy called …
Read More »
When we look at intergalactic space, evidence for dark matter is everywhere. It is in the rotation of galaxies, which cannot be explained by observable matter alone. It is in the way galaxies cluster together and the path of light as it travels through the Universe. We can’t see dark …
Read More »
The Universe is not just a random scattering of galaxies scattered across an expanding void. The closer we look, the more we see that there are structures, some of which are incomprehensibly vast clusters and clusters of galaxies that are gravitationally bonded. Such a structure has just been discovered arching …
Read More »