dark matter halo
We’re Living in an Abnormal Galaxy
Astronomers often use the Milky Way as a standard for studying how galaxies form and evolve. Since we're inside it,…
How Did Supermassive Black Holes Get So Big, So Early? They Might Have Had a Head Start
Supermassive Black Holes (SMBHs) can have billions of solar masses, and observational evidence suggests that all large galaxies have one…
Early Dark Energy Could Resolve Two of the Biggest Mysteries in Cosmology
Of all the mysteries facing astronomers and cosmologists today, the "Hubble Tension" remains persistent! This term refers to the apparent…
Mapping the Milky Way’s Dark Matter Halo
Anytime astronomers talk of mapping the Milky Way I am always reminded how tricky the study of the Universe can…
The Milky Way’s History is Written in Streams of Stars
The Milky Way is ancient and massive, a collection of hundreds of billions of stars, some dating back to the…
The Milky Way’s Smallest, Faintest Satellite Galaxy Found
The Milky Way has many satellite galaxies, most notably the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. They're both visible to the…
This New Map of 1.3 Million Quasars Is A Powerful Tool
Quasars are the brightest objects in the Universe. The most powerful ones are thousands of times more luminous than entire…
The Milky Way's Disk is Warped. Is That Because our Dark Matter Halo is Tilted?
Astronomers have measured the Milky Way's shape and found that the disk is warped and not a flat spiral like…
A Massive Galaxy With Almost No Dark Matter
Astronomers have found a massive galaxy that contains little to no Dark Matter, something that doesn't fit with current cosmological…
Gravitational Lensing is Helping to Nail Down Dark Matter
Using gravitational lenses, a team of astronomers showed how axions could be the particle that makes up Dark Matter.