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Showing news items 21 - 30 of 945

Stylized space scene showing the glowing top of a spacecraft or capsule emerging from a deep red nebula, with scattered distant stars on a black background

New Discovery Challenges Evolution of Galaxy Clusters

January 7, 2026 at 4:15 pm | News Release

Peering back in time, around 12 billion years, astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found the…

PASASAGES Lensed Protocluster Core Candidate PJ0846+15

Cosmic Lens Reveals Hyperactive Cradle of Future Galaxy Cluster

January 7, 2026 at 11:15 am | News Release

Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have discovered a rare protocluster that was exceptionally bright, all when the Universe was 11 billion years younger.

A multi-panel astronomical image shows the spiral galaxy M33 on the left, with soft blue-white spiral arms and a bright central bulge, overlaid by a faint rectangular outline marking a region near the galaxy’s center. Inset on the right is a zoomed, false-color radio/optical composite of that outlined area, filled with mottled clouds of blue, purple, and red, where the red regions trace clumpy, dense gas and the blue-purple background highlights more diffuse material and a central cavity. White labels identify a “Supernova Remnant” within a dashed circular outline in the lower-left of the inset, a nearby “Wolf-Rayet Star” just above and to the right, a faint “Cavity” region outlined by a dotted circle above them, and “Dense Gas” along the bright red structures to the right, illustrating how the massive star and past supernova have carved out a bubble in the surrounding gas within the galaxy.

Stars That Die Off the Beaten Path

January 6, 2026 at 4:15 pm | News Release

Astronomers have created a detailed forecast of where they expect to observe future stellar explosions in a nearby galaxy,…

A rectangular collage of fifteen small, purple-and-gold astronomical images arranged in three rows on a black background, each showing a hazy, glowing central source with irregular contours and scattered fainter specks resembling distant galaxies or stars.

Young Galaxies Grow Up Fast

January 6, 2026 at 12:15 pm | News Release

Astronomers have captured the most detailed look yet at faraway galaxies at the peak of their youth, an active…

This is an annotated composite image of Cloud-9, a Reionization-Limited H I Cloud (RELHIC), as captured by the Hubble Space Telescope’s ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) and the ground-based U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA) radio telescope.

The image shows a scale bar, compass arrows, and color key for reference.
The scale bar is labeled in light-years along the top, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. (It takes 2,000 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.

The scale bar is also labeled in arcseconds, which is a measure of angular distance on the sky. One arcsecond is equal an angular measurement of 1/3600 of one degree. There are 60 arcseconds in an arcminute and 60 arcminutes in a degree. (The full Moon has an angular diameter of about 30 arcminutes.) The actual size of an object that covers one arcsecond on the sky depends on its distance from the telescope.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

This image shows wavelengths of light, including radio waves, that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows the two ACS filters used to collect the light, along with the NSF VLA’s radio-wave contribution. A color key shows F606W in blue, F814W in orange, and Radio NSF VLA in magenta.

NSF NRAO Radio Telescopes Help Reveal Cloud-9, a Starless Dark-Matter “Failed Galaxy” Near M94

January 5, 2026 at 7:15 am | News Release

Astronomers using a powerful combination of radio and optical telescopes have confirmed that a peculiar gas cloud near the spiral galaxy M94 is a “failed” galaxy; a dark-matter-dominated halo filled with gas but entirely lacking stars.

The U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array on the plains of San Agustin, New Mexico

Hidden Giants of the Early Universe: NSF NRAO Telescopes Help Reveal Divergent Fates of the Most Massive Galaxies

January 5, 2026 at 7:15 am | News Release

Astronomers using the U.S. National Science Foundation National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) instruments Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and, the U.S. National Science Foundation Very Large Array (NSF VLA), and the W. M. Keck Observatory have uncovered the hidden lives of some of the most massive galaxies in the early Universe, revealing that while some shut down star formation quickly, others continue forming stars behind thick veils of cosmic dust.

Showing news items 21 - 30 of 945

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