Astronomy

Giant telescope opens both eyes The world's most powerful optical telescope has opened both of its eyes. Astronomers at the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona have released the first images taken using its two giant 8m diameter mirrors. The detailed pictures show a spiral galaxy located 102 million light-years away from the Milky Way. LBT has been 20 years in the making but promises to allow astronomers to probe the Universe further back in time and in more detail than ever before... Read Full Story

Dark matter is the modern fairy dust that makes everything (cosmologically) better.  Upon observing that the universe would need to have several hundred times more mass than we can see to be consistent with modern theories, many scientists apparently thought "Fair enough, there must be several universes worth of invisible magic stuff hiding throughout the entirety of existence".  Rather than the crazy heresy of "Maybe our theories need a little work".Lots of very smart people have come up... Read Full Story

Known until now as a simple number in a catalogue, NGC 134, the 'Island in the Universe' is replete with remarkable attributes, and the VLT has clapped its eyes on them. Just like our own Galaxy, NGC 134 is a barred spiral with its spiral arms loosely wrapped around a bright, bar-shaped central region. One feature that stands out is its warped disc. While a galaxy's disc is often pictured as a flat structure of gas and stars surrounding the galaxy's centre, a warped disc is a structure... Read Full Story

Art Courtesy of Love Peace Happiness Yipppeeee...Jupiter moves into Sagittarius tonight! I am grateful for this sign shift on Thanksgiving! "When the moon chases away the sun and cause my day to run i will not fear the darkest night for i know upon the other side is light." Lyrics by Ben Harper Technorati Tags:quotation blog, moon art,astrology, moon Read Full Story

The awesome Sombrero Galaxy M104 discovered in May 1781 by Pierre Méchain is a spiral galaxy in the constellation Virgo. In the 1990s, a research team, using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, discovered that a supermassive black hole with a mass 1 billion times the mass of the Sun is present at the center of the galaxy's large bulge. This is among the most massive black holes measured in any nearby galaxies. Scientists have long suspected that massive balck holes existed at the... Read Full Story

The Giant Elliptical Galaxy NGC 4261 is one of the twelve brightest galaxies in the Virgo cluster, located 45 million light-years away. Photographed in visible light (white) the galaxy appears as a fuzzy disk of hundreds of billions of stars. The  giant disk of cold gas and dust fuels a possible black hole at the galaxy's core of the galaxy. Estimated to be 300 light-years across, the disk is tipped enough (about 60 degrees) to provide astronomers with a clear view of the bright hub, which... Read Full Story

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