Four years of observations from the European Space Agency’s Integral (INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory) satellite may have cleared up one of the most vexing mysteries in our Milky Way: the origin of a giant cloud of antimatter surrounding the galactic center.

Astronomers at Rutgers and Penn State universities have discovered galaxies in the distant universe that are ancestors of spiral galaxies like our Milky Way.

Astronomers have found a new population of faint protogalaxies by taking the most sensitive spectroscopic survey ever of a time when the universe was only 15% of its present age. These objects are the probable building blocks of galaxies today, including our own Milky Way.

Most people have a few gigabytes of files on their PC. In the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 million gigabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array telescope.

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a spectacular image of NGC 3603, a giant nebula hosting one of the most prominent massive young clusters in the Milky Way, thus supplying a prime template for star formation studies.

Through some of very first scientific observations with the brand-new Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, an international team of astronomers has found that recently discovered tiny companion galaxy to our Milky Way, named Hercules Dwarf Galaxy, has truly exceptional properties: while basically all of its known peers in realm of these tiny dwarf galaxies are rather round, this galaxy at distance of 430,000 Light Years appears highly flattened, either shape of disk or of cigar.

IS A second black hole lurking at the heart of the Milky Way? A relatively simple test could answer the question: look for a pair of stars fleeing the galaxy at breakneck speed.

Picture the Milky Way galaxy-a disk of stars and gas, a stellar spheroid and an enormous halo of dark matter. It spirals around a black hole that is supermassive-about three million solar masses. The Milky Way's total mass is about 100 billion solar masses-enormous to us but average among galaxies.

Astronomers have discovered the exact location and makeup of a pair of supermassive black holes at the center of a collision of two galaxies more than 300 million light years away.

ESA's XMM-Newton has helped to find evidence for the existence of controversial Intermediate Mass Black Holes. Scientists used a new, recently proven method for determining the mass of black holes.

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, an international team of astronomers has shown how to use the chemical composition of stars in clusters to shed light on the formation of our Milky Way. This discovery is a fundamental test for the development of a new chemical tagging technique uncovering the birth and growth of our Galactic cradle.