New Hubble Images Dazzle

(NEWSER) - The Hubble has perfect vision again. NASA today released the first photos taken by the space telescope since an instrumental glitch put it out of commission last month, Space.com reports. Engineers fixed the problem this week, then got photos of a pair of galaxies about 400 million light-years from Earth. The two galaxies look a bit like the number 10, leading mission specialists to call Hubble's feat a "perfect 10." More»

Hanny's Voorwerp creating 'lonely' stars 'in the middle of nowhere'

(NEWSER) - The Hubble Telescope has turned its gaze to a mysterious glowing green blob that’s creating stars where stars shouldn’t normally form. Dubbed Hanny’s Voorwerp, after the Dutch elementary school teacher who first discovered it in 2007, the blob is a swirling mass of hydrogen gas, caused by a close encounter from two galaxies, astronomers tell the AP . It’s illuminated by a quasar lodged within one of those galaxies. More»

Debris from extremely recent collision

(NEWSER) - The Hubble Space Telescope has captured an image of a bizarre X-shaped object with a comet-like streak of dust behind it, NASA announced yesterday. Scientists believe the images represent an extremely recent asteroid collision, with a small rock, perhaps 10-15 feet wide, colliding with a larger, roughly 400-foot-wide one. When they first sighted the image in January, researchers thought the collision had just occurred, but now they date it to early 2009. More»

Amount of dark energy suggests it will expand forever

(NEWSER) - Scientists say they've learned "exactly what the fate of the universe will be," and it doesn't sound pleasant. A team led by a NASA astronomer predicts the universe will continue to expand forever and eventually will become a cold, dead wasteland, the BBC reports. How did they arrive at this cheery conclusion? By using a "galactic lens" to calculate the amount of dark energy in the cosmos. More»

The lead investigators thinks it's the result of an asteroid collision

(USER SUBMITTED) - An object captured on film by the Hubble telescope has astronomers scratching their heads. The body, named P/2010 A2 after it was discovered in early January, shares comet-like traits, but the head is x-shaped and seems to be disconnected from its tail, reports the New York Daily News . More»