Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s giant Green Bank Telescope have discovered a frigid reservoir of simple sugar molecules in a cloud of gas and dust some 26,000 light-years away, near the center of our Milky Way Galaxy.
Stellar Pair Shot Out from Its Birthplace
Astronomers studying data from the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array and other telescopes have concluded that a binary pair of stars forming an energetic microquasar was blasted out of the cluster in which it was born by a supernova.
Scientists Discover Two New Interstellar Molecules
A team of scientists using the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope has discovered two new molecules in an interstellar cloud near the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Radio Telescopes Reveal Youngest Stellar Corpse
Astronomers using a global combination of radio telescopes to study a stellar explosion some 30 million light-years from Earth have likely discovered either the youngest black hole or the youngest neutron star known in the Universe.
Gas Clouds in Arms of Whirlpool Galaxy
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.
Giant ‘Lobe’ in Galactic Center
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.