The Hubble Space Telescope has generated the most comprehensive survey yet of the Andromeda galaxy, the nearest galactic neighbor to the Milky Way. The new mosaic of about 2.5 billion pixels yields new clues to the galaxy's history. UW astronomers presented the findings Jan. 16 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

The team proposes a performance optimization framework of GVDS including the multitask-oriented data migration method and the request access-aware IO proxy resource allocation strategy.

Being lightweight is essential for space structures, particularly for tools used on already small, lightweight satellites. The ability to perform multiple functions is a bonus. To address these characteristics in a new way, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign successfully integrated flexible electronics with a three-ply, self-deployable boom that weighs only about 20 grams.

A first-of-its-kind study found subtle, but distinct vowel pronunciations in Pacific Islanders attending more diverse schools compared to students in a predominately white high school. The findings support a long-held theory from cultural anthropology—there’s a stronger tendency for groups to differentiate along ethnic lines where more groups share the same social space.

In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby stellar island to our Milky Way — the magnificent Andromeda galaxy (Messier 31). It can be seen with the naked eye on a very clear autumn night as a faint cigar-shaped object roughly the apparent angular diameter of our Moon.

A century ago, Edwin Hubble first established that this so-called "spiral nebula" was actually very far outside our own Milky Way galaxy — at a distance of approximately 2.5 million light-years or roughly 25 Milky Way diameters. Prior to that, astronomers had long thought that the Milky way encompassed the entire universe. Overnight, Hubble's discovery turned cosmology upside down by unveiling an infinitely grander universe.

Now, a century later, the space telescope named for Hubble has accomplished the most comprehensive survey of this enticing empire of stars. The Hubble telescope is yielding new clues to the evolutionary history of Andromeda, and it looks markedly different from the Milky Way's history.

Galaxies like the Milky Way grow by merging with smaller galaxies over billions of years, unlike dwarf galaxies, which have long been thought to lack the heft to attract mass and grow in the same way. New observations challenge this view, suggesting that even dwarf galaxies can accrete mass from other small galaxies.

Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows.

In a study published in the Astrophysical Journal, a team of researchers led by Kristen McQuinn, a scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Rutgers University-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences, has reported finding that Leo P “reignited,” reactivating during a significant period on the timeline of the universe, producing stars when many other small galaxies didn’t.