Galactic Collisions Meet Supermassive Black Holes in This Deep Space Image

Observations from some of the world’s most powerful telescopes—NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT) in India, the National Science Foundation’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, and Japan’s Subaru Telescope in Hawai’i have been combined to create an image of two incredibly powerful cosmic forces colliding, two billion light-years away. Hot gas…

Take a Scenic Flight Through the Universe

I don’t typically post things here about deep-space stuff (just to stay on theme) but this was too cool not to share. It’s a visualization of the Universe made from data acquired by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and shows the locations (and actual images, in most cases) of almost 400,000 galaxies as if we…

Our Galaxy Isn’t As Big As You Think It Is

Think the Milky Way is a big place? Think again — check out this graphic by Arecibo astrophysicist Rhys Taylor, which neatly illustrates the relative sizes of 25 randomly-selected galaxies using images made from NASA and ESA observation missions. It even includes a rendering of our own remarkably mundane galaxy at the center for comparison….

One Very Attractive Simulation

Here’s a fascinating physics model by computer artist Mark J. Stock, showing the 3-dimensional movements of 1 million bodies, each given their own gravity: One can easily imagine witnessing the birth of galaxies after the Big Bang, millions — even billions — of years passing before your eyes in seconds! It’s amazing how quickly a…