Galaxy

After close to a decade of observations, astronomers have accurately determined the distance to our neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). The measurement, which calculates the distance at 163,000 light-years, was achieved by studying rare pairs of stars known as eclipsing binaries.  Read More

Samsung has launched a Wi-Fi-only version of its über-connected Android-powered Galaxy Camera. While the original Samsung Galaxy Camera boasted 3G/4G capabilities along with its dual-band Wi-Fi and Android goodness, the new variant will not. Samsung claims the move will make the camera "more affordable" for users who don't always need to be connected.  Read More

NASA's Hubble telescope has discovered the most distant object yet seen in the universe. The object, a galaxy called MACS0647-JD, is 13.3 billion light years from Earth and can only be seen with the help of a lens of intergalactic proportions. The light from MACS0647-JD left it only 420 million years after the Big Bang, so it provides a valuable look into the nature of the early universe.  Read More

The European Space Observatory (ESO) has released an impressive 9-gigapixel image of the central part of the Milky Way Galaxy. The historic image contains some 84 million stars and represents the largest ever catalog of the center of our home galaxy.  Read More

The size and age of our Universe is not only a critically important issue in cosmology, but is also among the most controversial and delicate of the cosmological questions. Infrared observations made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have now given us the most precise estimate yet of the rate at which our Universe is expanding. The key was not the discovery of a new method for measuring distance. Rather, astronomers discovered how to measure brightness more accurately. The new value for the Hubble constant, good to within three percent, is 74.3 kilometers per second per megaparsec (km/s/Mpc).  Read More

Samsung has announced its latest handset at a press event in Frankfurt, Germany. The four-inch Galaxy S III Mini is an Android-powered smartphone designed to provide a premium alternative to the company's larger Galaxy S III device.  Read More

An international team of astronomers has combined data from NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory and Japan's Suzaku satellite to suggest that our galaxy may be surrounded by a halo of hot gas extending in all directions for hundreds of thousands of light-years. The finding also offers clues as to why more than half of the ordinary matter in early galaxies has seemingly disappeared without leaving a trace.  Read More

The Dark Energy Camera (DEC) has captured an initial batch of images as part of an ongoing quest to afford scientists with a better understanding of dark energy. The images were taken by the 570-megapixel behemoth from its location within the Chilean Andes on September 12 while undergoing a series of tests. Scientists hope it may soon help answer one of the biggest mysteries in physics: why the expansion of the universe is speeding up.  Read More

A new approach for simulating the birth and evolution of galaxies and cosmic filaments within the Universe has been developed by researchers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics together with their colleagues at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies. It's called AREPO, and has been used to simulate the evolution of our Universe from only 380,000 years after the Big Bang to the present. The full variety of spiral, elliptical, peculiar, and dwarf galaxies appear in the simulated Universe.  Read More