Despite a rough start to its six year mission, the Euclid space telescope is ending its commissioning phase on a high after finally being able to find its guide stars again.
The European Space Agency’s Euclid space telescope launched from Earth on July 1 and has since been getting set up to begin its investigation of the dark universe.
Behold a galactic onion: the shell galaxy NGC 3923, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s Dark Energy Camera (DECam) at a distance of about 70 million light-years from Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope is no spring chicken, having operated in space for over 30 years. But the veteran observatory soldiers on. It recently imaged a massive galaxy cluster that could hold secrets about both dark and ordinary matter.
When theoretical physicists like myself say that we’re studying why the universe exists, we sound like philosophers. But new data collected by researchers using Japan’s Subaru telescope has revealed insights into that very question.
Astronomers looking at ancient light seen by the Webb Space Telescope have found three pinpricks that they think could be “dark stars,” theoretical objects powered by dark matter.