Astronomers studying gas clouds in the famous Whirlpool Galaxy have found important clues supporting a theory that seeks to explain how the spectacular spiral arms of galaxies can persist for billions of years. The astronomers applied techniques used to study similar gas clouds in our own Milky Way to those in the spiral arms of a neighbor galaxy for the first time, and their results bolster a theory first proposed in 1964.

An astronomer using the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) has discovered that two prominent features rising out of the center of the Milky Way Galaxy are actually the distant edges of the same superstructure. This object, which has the appearance of a “lobe,” may have been formed during an epoch of furious star formation.

Twenty years ago, astronomers discovered a number of enigmatic radio-emitting filaments concentrated near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Thirty years after astronomers discovered the mysterious object at the exact center of our Milky Way Galaxy, an international team of scientists has finally succeeded in directly measuring the size of that object, which surrounds a black hole nearly four million times more massive than the Sun.

Green Bank, WV – A team of astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope has made the first conclusive detection of what appear to be the leftover building blocks of galaxy formation — neutral hydrogen clouds — swarming around the Andromeda Galaxy, the nearest large spiral galaxy to the Milky Way.

Astronomers have made a 42-day movie showing unprecedented detail of the inner workings of a strange star system that has puzzled scientists for more than two decades. Their work is providing new insights that are changing scientists’ understanding of the enigmatic stellar pairs known as microquasars.