NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope – Page 3

Most distant massive galaxy cluster identified

8 January 2016 Astronomy Now

The early universe was a chaotic mess of gas and matter that only began to coalesce into distinct galaxies hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang. It would take several billion more years for such galaxies to assemble into massive galaxy clusters — or so scientists had thought. Now astronomers have detected a massive, sprawling, churning galaxy cluster that formed only 3.8 billion years after the Big Bang, some 10 billion light years from Earth.

Space telescopes find “twins” of Eta Carinae in other galaxies

6 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Located about 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation of Carina, Eta Carinae outshines our Sun by 5 million times. The binary system consists of two massive stars in a tight 5.5-year orbit, shrouded in an expanding veil of gas and dust from an enormous eruption seen in the 1840s. Now a study using archival data from NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes has found five similar objects in other galaxies for the first time.

Runaway stars leave infrared waves in space

6 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers are finding dozens of massive, so-called ‘runaway stars’ in our galaxy with the help of images from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. When these speedy, massive stars plow through space, they can cause material to stack up in front of them, creating dramatic arc-shaped features called bow shocks.

Mystery of missing exoplanet water solved using NASA space telescopes

14 December 2015 Astronomy Now

A survey of ten hot, Jupiter-sized exoplanets conducted with NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer telescopes has led a UK-US team to solve a long-standing mystery — why some of these worlds seem to have less water than expected. The findings offer new insights into the wide range of planetary atmospheres in our galaxy and how planets are assembled.

NASA telescopes detect Jupiter-like storm on small, cool star

10 December 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using data from NASA’s Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes have discovered what appears to be a Jupiter-sized star with a colossal, cloudy storm with a diameter that could hold three Earths. The storm rotates around the L-dwarf star known as W1906+40 about every 9 hours and has lasted at least two years, probably longer.

UPDATED: Are comet fragments best explanation for mysterious dimming star?

25 November 2015 Keith Cooper

A star called KIC 8462852 has been in the news recently for unexplained and bizarre behaviour. NASA’s Kepler mission had monitored the star for four years, observing two unusual incidents, in 2011 and 2013, when the star’s light dimmed in dramatic, never-before-seen ways. Something had passed in front of the star and blocked its light, but what?

Earth-sized rocky planet found orbiting a nearby star

12 November 2015 Astronomy Now

The collection of rocky planets orbiting distant stars has just grown by one, and the latest discovery is the most intriguing yet. Known as GJ 1132b, the newfound world lies just 39 light-years away. Although hot as an oven, the 9,200 mile-wide planet is cool enough to potentially host an atmosphere. If it does, we could study that atmosphere in detail with the Hubble Space Telescope and future observatories like the Giant Magellan Telescope.

GMRT discovers giant radio galaxy 9 billion light-years away

7 November 2015 Astronomy Now

A team of astronomers working at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics have discovered an extremely rare galaxy of gigantic size using the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT). Known as J021659-044920, the galaxy is located about 9 billion light-years away, emits powerful radio waves and has an enormous extent of 4 million light-years.

Whopping galaxy cluster spotted with help of NASA telescopes

3 November 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have discovered a giant gathering of galaxies in a very remote part of the universe, thanks to NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). The galaxy cluster, located 8.5 billion light-years away, is the most massive structure yet found at such great distances.

ALMA unveils rapid star formation in distant galaxies

15 October 2015 Astronomy Now

In general, the larger a galaxy’s mass, the higher its rate of forming new stars. However, every now and then a galaxy will display a burst of newly-formed stars that shine brighter than the rest. Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA) have found that galaxies forming stars at extreme rates 9 billion years ago were more efficient than average galaxies today.