Astronomy by Pratyush Khare

An artist's illustration depicts a quasar, or supermassive, ultra-luminous black hole. About 13 billion years ago, when our universe was still just a scrappy startup, the cosmos hit a creative streak and churned out supermassive black holes left, right  and center . Astronomers can still sneak a peek at these relics of the early universe when they look at  quasars , incredibly large, outstandingly bright objects thought to be powered by old black holes billions of times more massive than Earth's sun. However, the very existence of these ancient objects poses a problem. Many quasars appear to originate from the first 800 million years of the universe, long before any stars could grow big or old enough to collapse under their own mass, explode in a  supernova  and form a black hole. So, where are these old holes in the fabric of space-time coming from? According to one popular theory, maybe all it takes is a whole lot of gas. In a new study, published June ...

What looks like a delicate dance between two galaxies is actually a slow-motion collision of colossal proportions in this Hubble Space Telescope photo. The two galaxies, called UGC 2369, are merging into one about 424 million light-years from Earth. Two  galaxies  are caught in a crazy cosmic dance, pulling at each other in a fresh image from a space telescope icon. Their mutual gravitational attraction is pulling the galaxies closer and closer together in this view from the  Hubble Space Telescope  released Aug. 13. The slow-motion galaxy collision, which scientists call UGC 2369, is about 424 million light-years away. (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, roughly 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers). The two collections of stars, gas and dust are so close to each other that a faint bridge of material spans the intergalactic gap. This material came from the "diminishing divide" between the two galaxies, the European Space Agency...

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows dust and gas swirling around the spiral galaxy NGC 3169. (Image: © ESA/NASA/Hubble/L. Ho) A new galactic image from the  Hubble Space Telescope  shows some interesting stuff lurking in cosmic dust, all from an unusual point of view. The venerable observatory turned its attention to NGC 3169, a spiral galaxy about 70 million light-years away in the constellation of Sextans, the Sextant. (One light-year is the distance light travels in a year, which is about 6 trillion miles or 10 trillion kilometers.) The "sharply angled perspective" that the space telescope imaged shows a sort of cosmic barrier that makes the viewer feel as though they're peering over the edge to see the galaxy's center, Hubble scientists said in  a description of the image . What's in the dust barrier is a mix of world-formation materials, including water ice, silicates and hydrocarbons. On a planet or moon, if you mix these...