These are the most peculiar galaxies you can observe astronomy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from astronomy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
July 30, 2021
Scutum over the famous Teapot pattern in the constellation Sagittarius, and near the bright red star Antares in Scorpius.
In late July and early August, watch for one of our sky’s most beautiful sights. Look in a dark sky, far from the glare of city lights, for a hazy pathway stretched across the sky. This band is the edgewise view into our own Milky Way galaxy. If you see it, you can also find a small but noteworthy constellation, called Scutum the Shield.
There are only four to five stars outlining the constellation, but Scutum is noticeable in a dark sky because the Milky Way is so rich here.
May 25, 2021 at 9:10 am
Chinese astronomers have been studying the night sky for longer than any other culture. The oldest star maps and the earliest records of sunspots have been unearthed by archaeologists in China, where a unique way of looking at the night sky developed about 1,200 BC.
Advertisement
Chinese astronomers Gan De and Shi Shen are credited as the first to create star catalogues in the 4th century BC, and the Buddhist monk Yi Xing conducted an astronomical survey in the 8th century AD to help with the prediction of solar eclipses.
Discover more guides like this via our History of Astronomy webpage.
Black holes eat their way through galaxies by employing a complex repertoire of buffet manners, according to an international team of astronomers led by the University of Pretoria’s Dr Jack Radcliffe.
Dramatically diverse eating preferences drive this cosmic dining decorum: some black holes chew the stellar cud and savour their meals; others stage prolonged hunger strikes that leave them starving. When shredding objects into threads of atoms, smaller black holes just a few times the mass of our Sun spaghettify everything unlucky to get close enough.
Supermassive black holes behave as though they are the very centre of the universe, beaming high-energy radio jets across spacetime near the speed of light.