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Starlight and the First Black Holes: Researchers Detect the Host Galaxies of Quasars in the Early Universe
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – An international team of scientists, including Chien-Hsiu Lee, staff astronomer at W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, has captured images for the first time of starlight from two massive galaxies hosting actively growing black holes, or quasars, from less than a billion years after the Big Bang. The successful detection […]
Read More >Life After Death: Hawaiʻi Astronomers Find a Planet that Shouldn’t Exist
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – When our Sun reaches the end of its life, it will expand to 100 times its current size, enveloping the Earth. Many planets in other solar systems face a similar doom as their host stars grow old. But not all hope is lost, as astronomers from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for […]
Read More >New Era of Exoplanet Discovery Begins with Images of ‘Jupiter’s Younger Sibling’
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island have discovered one of the lowest-mass planets whose images have been directly captured. Not only were they able to measure its mass, but they were also able to determine that its orbit is similar to the giant planets in our own solar […]
Read More >Rare Gravitational Lensing Warps Light Of Distant Supernova Into Four Images
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have captured a bizarre image of a supernova, the powerful explosion of a star, whose light was so warped by the gravity of a galaxy that it appears as multiple images in the sky. This effect, known as gravitational lensing, occurs when the gravity of a dense object distorts and brightens […]
Read More >Astronomers Capture Direct Image of Ancient Galaxy Recycling Gas to Make New Stars
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have found direct evidence showing ancient galaxies were able to sustain star formation by recycling gas from previous stars to birth new generations of stars. This recycled gas could have been enough to supply all the material needed for galaxies in the early universe to grow, shedding new light on the […]
Read More >First Detection of Radio Waves from a Type Ia Supernova
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A team of astronomers led by Stockholm University has discovered an unusual Type Ia supernova – or thermonuclear supernova – called SN 2020eyj. Not only did they make the first detection of such a supernova in radio waves, follow-up observations from W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island also showed strong […]
Read More >A Strange, Solitary Life for Young Stars at the Milky Way’s Center
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Stars living closest to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way have no stellar companions, a new study finds. Using W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea, Hawaiʻi Island, Devin Chu of Hilo, an astronomer with the UCLA Galactic Center Orbits Initiative, led a 10-year survey that found these […]
Read More >Star Eats Planet, Brightens Dramatically
For the first time, astronomers have caught a star in the act of swallowing a planet whole.
Read More >New Exoplanet-Hunting Technique Leads to Successful Direct Image of a Super-Jupiter
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – Astronomers have developed a new method for finding exoplanets whose portraits can be taken from Earth using large ground-based telescopes, one that has proven successful after this technique resulted in a direct image of a Jupiter-like gas giant located 132.8 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The planet, called HIP 99770 b, […]
Read More >First Ever 3D Map of Messier 87 Galaxy Assembled
Maunakea, Hawaiʻi – A UC Berkeley-led team of astronomers has for the first time measured the three-dimensional shape of Messier 87 (M87), one of the biggest and closest elliptical galaxies to us. New data from W. M. Keck Observatory on Maunakea in Hawaiʻi show M87 isn’t perfectly symmetrical after all, but rather triaxial – similar […]
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