Astronomy
On this page
Galaxies
How galaxies formed and evolved to become the beautiful objects we see today is a very hot topic in current astrophysics. This question is deeply connected to cosmology and the origin of the universe. Research in this area extends from the center of our own galaxy, to the end of the "dark age", when the first stars and galaxies in the universe were formed.
Galaxies
![This is a true-colour image of the major part of NGC 1365, combined from three exposures with the FORS1 multi-mode instrument at VLT UT1, in the B (blue), V (green) and R (red) optical bands. Credit: ESO galax](/polopoly_fs/1.616704.1654955860!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_690/image.jpg)
Supernovae
Most massive stars and some less massive stars in close binary systems end their lives in giant explosions, so-called supernovae. A supernova is seen as a new star in a distant galaxy, which first becomes brighter for a few weeks and then slowly fades. Remnants of previous supernovae can be seen in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies.
Supernovae
![Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, SN 1987A was the nearest supernova explosion observed in centuries and it quickly became the best studied supernova of all time. Credit: ALMA: ESO/NAOJ/NRAO/A. Angelich, Hubble: NASA, ESA, R. Kirshner (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation) and P. Challis (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Chandra: NASA/CXC/Penn State/K. Frank et al. Supernova 1989A](/polopoly_fs/1.616753.1655027181!/image/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_690/image.jpg)