The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder uses several telescopes to survey the sky.
After months of running in test-mode, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder telescope is now gathering data at an incredible rate to give us a new look at how our universe works.
Jets generated by supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies can transport huge amounts of energy across great distances.
REUTERS/X-ray: NASA/CXC/Tokyo Institute of Technology/J.Kataoka et al
It's difficult to get jets - powerful, lightning fast particles - to give up their secrets. The new Square Kilometre Array radio telescope could hold the key to solving jets' mysteries.
Light from the universe’s first galaxies destroyed the hydrogen atoms that formed during the Big Bang.
NASA, ESA, R. Ellis (Caltech), and the UDF 2012 Team
A new telescope aims to figure out what became of the universe's original atoms once the first stars began to shine.
A small section from the ZFOURGE survey, which contains thousands of galaxies spanning billions of years.
Hundreds of images of thousands of galaxies have given astronomers one of the most detailed galaxy studies ever compiled.
SKA South Africa
What's particularly exciting about "first light" images from South Africa's MeerKAT radio telescope is that they prove Africa is a rising star in the world of astronomy.
Spiral galaxy NGC 3953 is a veritable star making machine, but why do some galaxies stop forming new stars?
Galaxies are supposed to be the place where new stars are formed. So what causes some to stop this stellar production line?
The new discovery: The C-shaped “wide angle tail galaxy” (pink) surrounded by the galaxies of the Matorny-Terentev cluster (white).
The find by citizen scientists of at least 40 galaxies in a cluster more than a billion light years away is the astronomical equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.
An artist’s impression of the galaxies found in the ‘Zone of Avoidance’ behind our Milky Way.
International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research
Something mysterious is pulling our Milky Way through space at a much faster rate than expected. So what could it be?
Can a galaxy (like NGC 3810 in this case) have a classical spiral structure and also be already dead?
ESA/Hubble and NASA
Extragalactic astrophysicists want to know how and why galaxies stop forming stars, change their shape and fade away. With help from citizen scientists, they're figuring it out.
Images of galaxies far away may be forever blurred – no matter how big the telescope.
Telescopes are getting larger and larger as astronomers are hoping to get a good view of the most distant objects in space. But, it turns out, bigger isn't always better.
Supermassive black holes, containing as much mass as millions or billions of suns, exist at the centre of all galaxies, including our own Milky Way.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Tanya Hill speaks with Meg Urry about distant galaxies and the supermassive black holes that lurk in their centres.
Gilt-edged. The James Webb telescope steps up the search.
NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center
A giant golden mirror is on the brink of opening up a glimpse of the very first galaxies to be formed.
Australian astronomers have their eyes on the skies.
The next decade will be an exciting one for Australian astronomy, as we probe the heavens for answers to age old questions.
There are so many galaxies, you can write with them!
It’s National Science Week and this year the annual citizen science project run by ABC Science is astronomy-themed. No guesses for knowing that I’m excited about that! It’s also a nod to 2015 being the…
A composite image of Centaurus A which has a dwarf galaxy ESO 324-G024 nearby.
X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; Optical: Rolf Olsen; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Dwarf galaxies are the most abundant galaxies in the universe yet little is known about how they behave, and the impact of larger neighbours.
A colour image of G63349, one of the galaxies in the survey, created using near-infrared (VISTA telescope) and optical (Sloan telescope) data collated by the GAMA survey. (The bright green object is a nearby star.)
Our universe's most exciting days are well behind us, with new research showing the universe is now slowly but surely dying.
Breaking down the colours in the star light can reveal more about what you are looking at.
Flickr/Indigo Skies Photography
Astronomers can tell a whole lot more about a star or a galaxy if they break up the visible light in a rainbow of colours.
Artist’s impression of CR7.
Astronomers have spotted the earliest known stars in the universe, belonging to a class of chemically pure stars that may never have been seen before.
Wide-eyes: the Square Kilometre Array in the Karoo in South Africa.
The Square Kilometre Array is the world's largest telescope – what will it do and how does it work?