Find M4 near the Scorpion’s Heart

If you’ve never found a deep-sky object on your own before, M4 – a globular star cluster, one of the nearest to our solar system – is a grand place to start. It’s near the bright red star Antares in the easy-to-spot constellation Scorpius the Scorpion. To spot it, you’ll need a dark sky. Source: https://earthsky.org/clusters-nebulae-galaxies/find-m4-a-globular-cluster-by-the-scorpions-heart…

Warped diffusive radio halo detected around the galaxy NGC 4565

Using the LOw-Frequency ARray (LOFAR), astronomers have discovered a diffuse radio halo around the spiral galaxy NGC 4565. The finding, reported in a paper published July 16 on the arXiv pre-print server, could shed more light on the nature of NGC 4565, disclosing important insights about star-forming activity and the distribution of cosmic-ray electrons in this galaxy. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-07-warped-diffusive-radio-halo-galaxy.html…

Coming To a Streaming Service Near You: Shows Costing as Much as Big-Budget Movies

As Walt Disney, AT&T’s WarnerMedia and Apple prepare to enter the crowded streaming-entertainment market, they are racing to stand out with eye-catching shows that cost as much for a season as a big-budget movie [Editor’s note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source]. From a report: These new services are hoping their planned television epics will capture the cultural conversation, like…

Astronomers ponder halos around galaxies

Galaxies are massive and beautiful islands of stars. But did you know that most galaxies are surrounded by halos? A complex instrument on the Very Large Telescope is giving astronomers new views of these galactic rings of light. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/galaxies-halos-muse-very-large-telescope-eso…

Cool halo gas caught spinning like galactic disks

A group of astronomers led by Crystal Martin and Stephanie Ho of the University of California, Santa Barbara, has discovered a dizzying cosmic choreography among typical star-forming galaxies; their cool halo gas appears to be in step with the galactic disks, spinning in the same direction. Source: https://phys.org/news/2019-06-cool-halo-gas-caught-galactic.html…

See Beresheet spacecraft’s impact site on moon

NASA released before and after images of the spot on the moon where Israel’s Beresheet spacecraft crash-landed on April 11. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/see-beresheet-spacecraft-impact-crash-site-moon…

A massive collision in the Milky Way’s past

Our Milky Way galaxy has probably collided or otherwise interacted with other galaxies during its lifetime; such interactions are common cosmic occurrences. Astronomers can deduce the history of mass accretion onto the Milky Way from a study of debris in the halo of the galaxy left as the tidal residue of such episodes. The approach has worked particularly well for studies…