Galaxies

Artistic concept of the Milky Way as a Quasar (Image courtesy Mark A. Garlick/CfA)

0

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research about the Milky Way that offers a solution to the problem of the missing mass. A team of scientists led by Fabrizio Nicastro, a research associate at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and astrophysicist at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), used ESA’s XMM-Newton space telescope to discover a kind of gaseous fog that absorbs emissions from distant sources. The existence of such a bubble indicates that some millions of years ago the Milky Way was a quasar.

Simulation of the large-scale structure of the universe (Image Nico Hamaus, Universitäts-Sternwarte München, courtesy of The Ohio State University)

0

An article accepted for publication in the journal “Physical Review Letters” describes a research on the distribution of matter in the universe made in a way different from usual. An international team of researchers studied cosmic voids as if they were photographic negatives from which they could get information about ordinary matter, dark energy and dark matter.

The area around dwarf galaxy DDO 68 with a possible satellite seen by LBT (Image courtesy Francesca Annibali/INAF)

1

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters” describes a research about the dwarf galaxy DDO 68. An international team of researchers led by Francesca Annibali of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), Italy, used the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) to make observations that allowed to find evidence that even a very small galaxy can capture smaller galaxies.

Artistic representation of the gas halo surrounding the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds (Image NASA/CXC/M.Weiss/Ohio State/A Gupta et al)

0

An article published in “The Astrophysical Journal” describes a research on the huge halo of gas surrounding the Milky Way. A group of astronomers at the University of Michigan used data from ESA’s XMM-Newton telescope’s archives to discover that the galaxy’s halo spins in the same direction and at a speed comparable with its disk. This discovery may help better understand the formation of galaxies and solar systems within them.