The Milky Way

Behold: The First Image of Our Galaxy’s Central Black Hole

It's the second major view of a black hole to come out of the Event Horizon Telescope.

Space & Spaceflight Isaac Schultz May 12

Newly Launched ‘Galileo Project’ Will Hunt for Alien Technologies in Our Midst

The project is led by Avi Loeb, a Harvard astronomer who argued that interstellar object ‘Oumuamua might be an alien probe.

Space & Spaceflight George Dvorsky Jul 27

Hubble Sees Our Galaxy Sucking Up a Mysterious Amount of Gas

The Milky Way seems to be gobbling up a mysterious amount of gas—more than it spits back out, according to a new paper. Our galaxy maintains a level of “stuff” through a feedback process: It eats up gas from the surrounding environment to form stars, and then it spits the gas back out via supernovas…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Oct 11

The Universe’s Oldest Galaxies Could Be Right in the Milky Way’s Backyard

The Universe’s earliest epochs appear to be written into the small dwarf galaxies orbiting our own galactic home, the Milky Way. A team of researchers studying dark matter noticed a strange trend in the brightness of the satellite galaxies around the Milky Way. There seem to be two classes of these orbiting dwarf galaxies—dim ones…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Aug 17

Our Neighbor Andromeda May Have Cannibalized Another Galaxy

Our nearest galactic neighbor, the spiral Andromeda galaxy, seems to have a history of cannibalism. New research suggests that Andromeda gobbled up another large galaxy some two billion years ago. Galactic histories are rife with uncertainty and chaos—but how much chaos? New models of galactic formation demonstrate that Andromeda may have undergone one big merger…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jul 23

Can We Measure Our Own Galaxy Speeding Through Space?

You’re probably sitting still, right? Wrong, absolutely wrong. Not only are you on a spinning orb, but you’re also traveling around 70,000 miles per hour around a star, in a galaxy that, observations imply, is sailing through space at over a million miles per hour. If the above numbers seem shocking, they shouldn’t be. The…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jul 13

Our Galaxy Was Walloped by a Neighbor in Its Not-So-Distant Past, New Analysis Suggests

Space is a chaotic, ever-changing place. But that’s not limited to exploding stars and colliding black holes. Even our own Milky Way galaxy could have recently received a massive jolt from which it is still recovering. Since the Gaia mission’s massive data drop last week, scientists around the world have been hard at work crunching…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 30

Incredible New View of the Milky Way Is the Largest Star Map Ever

The European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft team has dropped its long-awaited trove of data about 1.7 billion stars. You can see a new visualization of all those stars in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies above, but you really need to zoom in to appreciate just how much stuff there is in the map. Yes,…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 25

Tomorrow’s Star Map Release Could Revolutionize Our Understanding of Astronomy

Astronomers from the European Space Agency’s Gaia mission will release the biggest map of our galaxy ever tomorrow, using data collected by the Gaia space telescope. That includes 1.7 billion stars, as well as new information that could potentially solve some cosmic mysteries. The ESA’s Gaia telescope launched in 2013 and soon after began its galaxy-mapping mission.…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 24

This Is How Stars Would Look Over NYC If It Weren’t So Freaking Light Polluted

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen the Little Dipper—the 2003 blackout, a family trip to the Grand Canyon, a camping trip, and a stargazing drive through Wisconsin cut short by the cold. I don’t remember ever seeing the faint band of the Milky Way. Growing up in New York’s…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 6

Astronomers Find Evidence of Thousands of Black Holes at the Center of Our Galaxy

Astronomers have long predicted that as many as 20,000 black holes could be hiding in our galaxy’s center, but so far no one has been able to spot them. Until now. A Columbia University-led team of scientists dug through data taken with the Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to find the objects. They managed to find…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Apr 4

12 Incredible New Images of Galaxies and Nebulae from the Hubble Telescope

Look up to the sky with the unaided eye and you’ll see lots of specks and globs that look mostly like stars. On closer inspection, though, some of those dots refuse to resolve, smeared out on the night sky. Famed astronomer Charles Messier noticed these objects while studying comets—indeed, they looked like comments standing still…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 20

Dark Matter May Not Solve This Galactic Mystery After All

Physicists would love to find hints of dark matter to explain the parts of the universe we just haven’t been able to figure out. Dark matter would neatly explain the strange behaviors of galaxies and oddly bent light in our universe. But a new paper may have snuffed out dark matter as a candidate for…

Space & Spaceflight Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 12

Half of Our Galaxy Might Have Come From Other Galaxies

Any Carl Sagan fan knows you’re made of star stuff. Protons don’t decay into any other particles (as far as we can tell), so you can reliably assume that most bits of you have been around since a second after the Big Bang. But if you’re thinking a little more locally, you might wonder whether…

Tech News Ryan F. Mandelbaum Jul 27

Finally, an Astrophysics Model Even Your Stoner Friend Will Love

The Milky Way isn’t just stars orbiting a black hole—it’s loaded with dust and debris, floating with reckless abandon in the space between solar systems. And like the stuff that accompanies wildfires or windy days in the desert, dust makes it hard to see. Think about that, bro… we’re just like, specks of dust. Scientists…

Physics & Chemistry Ryan F. Mandelbaum Mar 22

Hold our entire galaxy in the palm of your hand

The Spitzer Space Telescope crew have stitched together 800,000 frames of data into an enormous mosaic of our galaxy. This is just a tiny glimpse of the whole shebang, showing the Milky Way’s violent stellar coming of age. [APOD]

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jun 5

Behold: The First Image of Our Galaxy’s Central Black Hole

Newly Launched ‘Galileo Project’ Will Hunt for Alien Technologies in Our Midst

Hubble Sees Our Galaxy Sucking Up a Mysterious Amount of Gas

The Universe’s Oldest Galaxies Could Be Right in the Milky Way’s Backyard

Our Neighbor Andromeda May Have Cannibalized Another Galaxy

Can We Measure Our Own Galaxy Speeding Through Space?

Our Galaxy Was Walloped by a Neighbor in Its Not-So-Distant Past, New Analysis Suggests

Incredible New View of the Milky Way Is the Largest Star Map Ever

Tomorrow’s Star Map Release Could Revolutionize Our Understanding of Astronomy

This Is How Stars Would Look Over NYC If It Weren’t So Freaking Light Polluted

Astronomers Find Evidence of Thousands of Black Holes at the Center of Our Galaxy

12 Incredible New Images of Galaxies and Nebulae from the Hubble Telescope

Dark Matter May Not Solve This Galactic Mystery After All

Half of Our Galaxy Might Have Come From Other Galaxies

Finally, an Astrophysics Model Even Your Stoner Friend Will Love

Hold our entire galaxy in the palm of your hand

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