On Oct. 13, 1773, a French astronomer named Charles Messier discovered the "whirlpool galaxy," also known as Messier 51, or M51. Charles Messier was scanning the sky for objects that could confuse ...

Messier 51 (M51) is perhaps better known by its nickname of the Whirlpool Galaxy because its face-on orientation to Earth reveals its wound-up spiral arms. This gives telescopes here a view of another ...

Herschel opened its ‘eyes’ on 14 June and the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer obtained images of M51, ‘the whirlpool galaxy’ for a first test observation. Scientists obtained images in ...

It's incredible enough that 4,863 extrasolar planets have been discovered since the first two were detected in January 1992. Now, astronomers have found evidence for a planet candidate in one of the ...

The search for expolanets — those orbiting stars beyond our sun — is taking place outside of the Milky Way as we speak, and astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have observed indicators ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Data sonification translates information collected by various NASA missions — such as the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and ...