Topic: Galaxies & Cosmology
DESI Takes Census of Black Holes in More Than One Million Galaxies

DESI Takes Census of Black Holes in More Than One Million Galaxies

by | Mar 9, 2025 |

Artist's illustration depicting a dwarf galaxy that hosts an active galactic nucleus (credit: NOIRLab) Back when I started astronomy in the 1990s, folks joked that a sample of 6 was big enough to do statistics. In those early days of digital cameras and multi-meter telescopes, it still took a night or more to observe a single galaxy.  I bring this up because a recent press release casually failed to mention that a new publication using the Dark Energy Survey Instrument started with a sample of 1,385,177 galaxy spectra… and this is just galaxies from their Early Data Release. There are...

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Euclid Releases First Science Images

Euclid Releases First Science Images

by | Jun 18, 2024 |

While the 33 year old Hubble struggles, the not yet 1 year old Euclid space telescope has released its first science images. Euclid is a 1.2 m telescope with a wide-angle camera that is designed to survey galaxy shapes and study dark matter and dark energy. It is...

Hubble Down to One Gyro

Hubble Down to One Gyro

by | Jun 17, 2024 | ,

In a June 4 telecon with the press, NASA shared that due to recent issues, they have made the decision to operate HST in single gyro mode. This isn’t expected to have any impact on the quality of individual science images, however Hubble will need significantly more...

Hubble Resolves star formation

Hubble Resolves star formation

by | Jun 4, 2024 |

Image credit: NASA / ESA One of the things I personally enjoy most about working in astronomy is the way yesterday’s empty star fields and faint smudges resolve into spectacular vistas and amazing nebulae as we build better telescopes and find the time to point them...

JWST Echoes the Hubble Tension

JWST Echoes the Hubble Tension

by | Apr 10, 2024 |

Comparison of Hubble and Webb views of a Cepheid variable star. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Riess (JHU/STScI) Understanding our universe isn’t a straightforward process. For every theory that appears to be beautifully proven out by data, there is another theory...

Gaia Watches the Universe Form

Gaia Watches the Universe Form

by | Apr 10, 2024 |

Credit: ESA/Gaia/DPAC; Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation; K. Storey-Fisher et al. 2024 In trying to understand our universe, theorists can build models that describe how the universe formed as a mostly, but not completely, smooth distribution of matter and energy...

Galactic Death may not be Permanent

Galactic Death may not be Permanent

by | Mar 27, 2024 |

False-colour JWST image of a small fraction of the GOODS South field, with JADES-GS-z7-01-QU highlighted. Credit: JADES Collaboration In a paper in Nature, with Tobias Looser as the first author, researchers discuss a galaxy cataloged as JADES-GS-z7-01-QU. This...

Galaxies are Born Bright

Galaxies are Born Bright

by | Mar 27, 2024 |

This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument shows a portion of the GOODS-North field of galaxies. At the lower right, a pullout highlights the galaxy GN-z11, which is seen at a time just 430 million years after the Big Bang. One prominent...