Robert Lea

2 weeks ago | livescience.com | Robert Lea

Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to peer back in time over 10 billion years, observing an early era in cosmic history. In doing so, the team from the University of Kansas (KU) found ravenous black holes at the hearts of galaxies during "cosmic noon" experiencing a wild growth spurt.

2 weeks ago | space.com | Robert Lea

Astronomers have discovered a dense stellar nursery packed with infant stars in a vast "cosmic ink blot."The team made the discovery using one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world: the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The dark shadow overlaid on a starry background is known as the Circinus West molecular cloud.

2 weeks ago | livescience.com | Robert Lea

Scientists have long believed that monster-sized supermassive black holes lurk at the heart of all large galaxies. That means that the failure to detect such a cosmic titan at the heart of the Southern Pinwheel Galaxy, officially known as Messier 83 (M83), has been a frustrating conundrum.

2 weeks ago | space.com | Robert Lea

The Hubble Space Telescope may have just celebrated its 35th birthday on April 24, but it's still providing groundbreaking astronomy. Case in point: Astronomers have used Hubble along with an array of other telescopes including NASA's Chandra X-ray space observatory, the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) and the Parkes 64-meter telescope, to explore supernova wreckage in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

3 weeks ago | space.com | Robert Lea

Astronomers have discovered that "super-Earth" planets may exist on wider orbits than previously thought — and this implies these rocky, or "terrestrial," worlds are far more common than was suspected. Super-Earths, in short, are planets with masses up to 10 times that of our planet, but still less than the masses of gas giant planets.