The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest location in the known universe at roughly 2 degrees colder than empty space! This nebula is the result of the death of a red giant star, and the extreme temperature is caused by the rapid expansion of the nebula. According to thermodynamics, if you expand a gas you cool a gas (just try using one of those compressed air cans for cleaning electronics). However, according to astronomers, a single star's death could not account for a strong enough wind to create

When you read a scientific story in a popular blog or magazine, many times you will see the caveat "artist interpretation" next to some of the accompanying images. This as a gross undersell of the time, effort, and most important, accuracy, that goes into developing the renders. While we don't know what a black hole or an exoplanet looks like, it is important to attempt to visualize them, and to do it as accurately as possible. This video is an interview with two people who are responsible for

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a 3 gigapixel image of Sharpless 2-54, the Eagle Nebula, and the Omega Nebula; the detail is astounding. Taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at the Paranal Observatory, Chile, the image spans roughly 2 degrees on the sky, or about 4 full moons side-by-side. One of the most iconic nebula in the sky, the Eagle Nebula is at the centre of the image.

A newly discovered exoplanet, LHS 1140b, is being called the "best place to look for signs of life beyond the Solar System." The reason is because of a confluence of factors: the planet is likely rocky, orbits a relatively quiet star, passes in-front of its star from Earth's point-of-view every 25 days, and likely has an atmosphere. At the moment, studying that atmosphere in detail is not possible; however, with the next generation of telescopes coming online in the coming years (TMT, ELT, JWST)

The Boomerang Nebula is the coldest location in the known universe: it measures at roughly 2 degrees colder than empty space! This nebula is the result of the death of a red giant star, and the extreme temperature is caused by the rapid expansion of the nebula. According to thermodynamics, if you expand a gas you, cool a gas (just try using one of those compressed air cans for cleaning electronics). However, according to astronomers, a single star's death could not account for a strong enough

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) will be a network of radio telescopes spanning the entire globe. Together, the thousands of telescopes will add to 1 square kilometer of collecting area. While the project isn't set to have first light (read: turn the telescope on for the first time) until the 2020s, the SKA Organization broke ground on a new Head Quarters April 28, 2017. The HQ will be located next to the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Lower Withington, UK. This is a major step forward in the

Astronomers from Keele University, the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, and others, have discovered the first atmosphere around an Earth-sized planet. The planet, GJ1132b is about 1.4x Earth's diameter and 39 light years away from us. Currently there are over 3000 known planets orbiting stars other than the Sun, but only a handful of which have been confirmed to have atmospheres, and all of which are massive Jupiter-sized planets. In the ongoing quest to find a planet similar to Earth, this

This nebula, named Lynds' Dark Nebula (LDN) 1622 (the 1622 dark nebula catalogued by Beverly T. Lynds), is a dim and dusty cloud of gas. It is approximately 500 light years away (meaning, it takes light about 500 years to travel the distance), and about 10 light-years across (which would be about 10x bigger than our solar system). Lynds' list originally contained 1802 objects she found by visual inspection of the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS I) catalog. POSS I was a survey that imaged

Tucked between a boiled-away desert and a giant snowball, an alien world called TRAPPIST-1e may be the only habitable planet in a newly discovered batch of seven, according to a new climate model.