Infrared Astronomy
“Oddball” Asteroid is Really a Comet
It's a case of mistaken identity: a near-Earth asteroid with a peculiar orbit turns out not to be an asteroid…
Hubble Looks Back In Time To See Shape Of Galaxies 11 Billion Years Ago
What we’re gonna’ do here is go back. Way back into time. Back to when the only thing that existed…
Rocky Alien Planets: What The Heck Is On Their Surfaces?
We don't have the budget yet to send Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise to probe the surface of strange new worlds,…
Orion’s Secret Fire Dance
The Great Orion Nebula has captivated observers for at least four hundred years, but the ancient Mayans may have known…
Herschel Space Telescope Closes Its Eyes on the Universe
Sadly – though as expected – the most powerful far-infrared orbital telescope put in orbit has ended mission. The Herschel…
Lighting Up Andromeda’s Coldest Rings
Cold rings of dust are illuminated in this image taken by Herschel's Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instrument. Credit: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/B.…
Clouds of Sand and Iron Swirl in a Failed Star’s Extreme Atmosphere
Artist's concept of brown dwarf 2MASSJ22282889-431026 (NASA/JPL-Caltech) The complex weather patterns within the atmosphere of a rapidly-rotating brown dwarf have been…
The Brightest Galaxies in the Universe Were Invisible… Until Now
Hubble images of six of the starburst galaxies first found by ESA's Herschel Space Observatory (Keck data shown below each…
- Cosmology
- Herschel Space Telescope
- Infrared Astronomy
- Observatories
- Spitzer
- Star Formation
- Stars
- Stellar Evolution
Orion Revisited: Astronomers Find New Star Cluster in Front of the Orion Nebula
The well-known star-forming region of the Orion Nebula. Credit: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope / Coelum (J.-C. Cuillandre & G. Anselmi) Precise distances…
Closely-Orbiting Stellar Companions Surrounded by “Mystery Dust”
Artist's concept showing a dust disk around a binary system containing a white dwarf and a less-massive M (red) dwarf…