On Webbb’s Second Anniversary, it Portrays an Interaction Between Galaxies

The James Webb Space Telescope takes constant observations, including images and highly detailed data known as spectra. Its operations have led to a ‘parade’ of discoveries by astronomers around the world. It has never felt more possible to explore every facet of the Universe. The telescope’s specialisation in capturing infrared light – which is beyond […]

Strong Spiral Magnetic Fields Discovered at the Edge of the Milky Way’s Central Black Hole

In 2022 scientists unveiled the first image of Sgr A* at press conferences around the world, including at the European Southern Observatory (ESO). While the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, which is roughly 27 000 light-years away from Earth, is more than a thousand times smaller and less massive than M87’s, the first-ever black hole […]

Ancient Currents that Formed the Milky Way are Clarified.

ESA’s Gaia space telescope has further disentangled the history of our galaxy, discovering two surprising streams of stars that formed and wove together over 12 billion years ago.   The two streams, named Shakti and Shiva, helped form the infant Milky Way. Both are so ancient they likely formed before even the oldest parts of […]

Hubble Finds Weird Home of Farthest Fast Radio Burst

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found a rare oddball event in an oddball place. A Fast Radio Burst (FRB) is a fleeting blast of energy that can – for a few milliseconds – outshine an entire galaxy. Over the past few years hundreds of FRBs have been detected. They pop off all […]

Astronomers Detect Most Distant Fast Radio Burst to Date

The discovery of the burst, named FRB 20220610A, was made in June last year by the ASKAP radio telescope in Australia  and it smashed the team’s previous distance record by 50 percent. “Using ASKAP’s array of dishes, we were able to determine precisely where the burst came from,” says Stuart Ryder, an astronomer from Macquarie […]

Webb Shows Stunning Ringed World in New Image of Uranus

The seventh planet from the Sun, Uranus is unique: it rotates on its side, at a nearly 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit. This causes extreme seasons since the planet’s poles experience many years of constant sunlight followed by an equal number of years of complete darkness. (Uranus takes 84 years to orbit […]