On Wednesday, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) unveiled a stunning new image of the Milky Way’s galactic plane taken by the APEX telescope in Chile’s Atacama Desert.
A composite of more than 700 observations captured by the telescope, it’s the most detailed image ever created of our galaxy from the Southern hemisphere, and the first time that the southern Milky Way has been shown at the submillimeter wavelengths between infrared light and radio waves:
Astronomers witnessed a spectacular sight recently when they spotted an embryonic “monster” star in the Milky Way. Though the star is still forming, it’s expected to grow to become 100 times the mass of the sun, which would make it one of the galaxy’s most massive stars.
The photo of this monster star in the Milky Way was quite a feat for scientists at the Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) astronomy facility since the birth of such a large star is not often witnessed, let alone captured in a photo.
The star formation is located 11,000 light years from Earth in a stellar womb that is estimated to encompass 500 times the mass of the sun. In a photo of the formation, provided by the European Southern Observatory, the Milky Way’s monster star appears as a yellow blob in the center of the “womb.”
The habitable zone of a nearby star is filled to the brim with planets that could support alien life, scientists announced today (June 25).
An international team of scientists found a record-breaking three potentially habitable planets around the star Gliese 667C, a star 22 light-years from Earth that is orbited by at least six planets, and possibly as many as seven, researchers said. The three planet contenders for alien life are in the star’s “habitable zone” — the temperature region around the star where liquid water could exist. Gliese 667C is part of a three-star system, so the planets could see three suns in their daytime skies.
The three potentially rocky planets in Gliese 667C’s habitable zone are known as super-Earths — exoplanets that are less massive than Neptune but more massive than Earth. Their orbits make them possible candidates for hosting life, officials from the European Southern Observatory said in a statement.
.
.
.Click link below for story, video, photos, and slideshow:
