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Scientists at the Max-Planck-Institute for Astrophysics describe a further step in understanding the flow of matter towards objects of very high concentration of mass. These compact objects are known as "black holes", with gravitation so dominant that all matter and radiation fall into them if close enough.

In the early universe, many galaxies exhibit extremely bright sources at their nuclei, so-called quasars. It is thought that the luminosity of the quasars is produced by super massive black holes in the centers of galaxies. The masses of these black holes are tightly correlated with the velocity dispersion of the stars in the central bulge of their host galaxies, which suggests a common formation mechanism...

Australian astronomers from the Anglo-Australian Observatory, The Australian National University, CSIRO and the University of New South Wales, together with their UK colleagues, today announced that they have found the 'missing link' that directly relates modern galaxies like our own Milky Way to the Hot Big Bang that created our Universe 14 thousand million years ago.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has uncovered a hatchery for massive stars in a Messier favorite.

The Hubble Space Telescope's near-infrared vision is hot on the trail of a possible planetary companion to a relatively bright young brown dwarf located 225 light-years away in the southern constellation Hydra...

Not much perhaps but dipping a paw into another food group for a moment promotes good mental health and, in this case, good health in general. This is all about a novel distributed computing project by Stanford University that could help lead to cures for Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease. We are posting it in the hope that people familiar with SETI@HOME might consider it as an alternative way to be of service...

Free Astronomy Course Offered via Internet and Cable. Planetary Society and California State University Dominguez Hills Team Up on Distance Learning - Article by Susan Lendroth

It hasn't found planets yet - but in its first year of operation, the instrument has already proved its worth...

Ed Moran covers the 22mm and 17mm Nagler T4 eyepieces and has captured the prize this week.

A new telescope array yields an unprecedented close-up of the bright star Regulus

ESA's SMART-1 captured its first close-range images of the Moon this January, during a sequence of test lunar observations from an altitude between 1000 and 5000 kilometers above the lunar surface.

The engineers have been hard at work on the new CPC Series and it appears they've been tweaking the price tags some, too...

This week's review winner passes along sage advice based on experience to make life easier for those who follow...

An astronomer studying small irregular galaxies discovered a remarkable feature in one galaxy that may provide key clues to understanding how galaxies form and the relationship between the gas and the stars within galaxies.

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have discovered jets of plasma blasted from the cores of distant galaxies at speeds within one-tenth of one percent of the speed of light, placing these plasma jets among the fastest objects yet seen in the Universe.