Cosmic distance ladder

The spiraling arms of the Pinwheel galaxy.Image: NASA, ESA, K. Kuntz (JHU), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Lab), J. Mould (NOAO), Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana) and STScI; CFHT Image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum; NOAO Image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSFIn the ever-changing cosmic goo that is the universe, the biggest stars end their lives in enormous explosions called supernovae. These bursts are so bright that they are visibleacross…

Astronomers have seen the most energetic cosmic explosion yet, which they believe resulted from a gas cloud being disrupted by a supermassive black hole.First Full-Color Images From Webb Space TelescopeThe explosion (dubbed AT2021lwx) happened billions of light-years away and was first spotted in 2020. But now it’s lasted over three years, indicating the sheer amount of material involved in the event. The team’s research describing the explosion was published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical…

The Webb Space Telescope has spotted six pinpricks of reddish-orange light that scientists say are actually galaxies as mature as the Milky Way—despite being billions of years younger.The galaxies are seen as they looked about 500 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang, over 13 billion years ago. The presence of galaxies so early in the universe is not surprising, but the degree to which the galaxies are developed is throwing astronomers for a loop. Analysis of the image data is published today in Nature.“These…

In late June, the Webb Space Telescope trained its eye on two of the farthest galaxies seen to date. The galaxies existed several hundred million years after the Big Bang, making them some of the earliest light sources to emerge in the universe.The galaxies are seen on the outskirts of Abell 2744, a giant galaxy cluster (in fact, a hodge-podge of four smaller clusters) in the constellation Sculptor. One of the galaxies existed 450 million years after the Big Bang, the moment that the universe came into being; the other is…

Illustration: ESA/Gaia/DPAC/CU6It wasn’t all stars for Gaia’s third dataset. The space observatory also mapped the orbit of more than 150,000 asteroids, from the inner parts of the solar system all the way out to the Trojan asteroids that trail behind, and lead in front of, Jupiter. The different types of asteroids are indicated by different colors.The yellow dot at the center of the illustration is the Sun, while the blue represents the inner part of the solar system,with its rocky planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, and…