Astronomy / Astrophysics

Dense cosmic regions of dark matter host massive galaxy clusters (Image Van Waerbeke, Heymans, and CFHTLens collaboration)

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At the 219th meeting of the American Astronomical Society, an international group of researchers led by Professor Ludovic Van Waerbeke of the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, presented the map of dark matter on the largest scale ever seen.

Stephen Hawking and his daughter Lucy in 2008 at NASA's 50th anniversary (Image NASA/Paul Alers)

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Stephen William Hawking was born on January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. He’s been working in physics and astrophysics research. He wrote scientific essays knows even outside science field such as “A Brief History of Time” and has been the protagonist of several documentaries.

Titan and Dione with Saturn rings in the background (Image NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)

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One of the photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft is truly extraordinary: Titan and Dione appear so close as to touch each other and in the background there are Saturn’s rings. Actually, Titan is at a distance of approximately 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Cassini while Dione is about 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from the spacecraft. It’s therefore an optical effect but the combination of elements is really fantastic!

A forming star in the Sharpless 2-106 nebula (Image NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA))

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In February 2011 the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 captured the extraordinary show of a star that is still forming illuminating the surrounding cloud of hydrogen and now NASA and ESA have published some stunning images of it. This star is part of a nebula known as Sharpless 2-106 (Sh2-106, or abbreviated as S106) because it’s one of those cataloged by astronomer Stewart Sharpless in the ’50s.