The telescope technique of adaptive optics is rapidly advancing, allowing unprecedented ground-based views of distant galaxies, stars, and planets both inside and outside our Solar System. Adaptive optics reduces the greatest obstacle to a clear picture for telescopes viewing the sky from Earth: interference from our own planet’s atmosphere.

Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory recently used adaptive optics to spot details in the core of NGC 253, one of the brightest and dustiest spiral galaxies in the sky. The new image shows that the core is packed with massive nurseries of young stars. The observations also suggest that the supermassive black hole at this galaxy’s center is similar to the one at the center of the Milky Way. Learning more details about our galactic neighbors allows researchers to better understand how our own galaxy compares to the crowd.

To learn about other recent astronomical discoveries, visit the Science Bulletins website.

At long last, two teams of scientists have directly glimpsed the feeble light of planets orbiting distant stars through the lenses of telescopes. Before now, all of the 325 planets discovered outside our solar system had been located by indirect means, such as measuring their gravitational effects on their host star. The two teams used enhanced optical techniques to bring the planets into view. One group, led by Paul Kalas of the University of California-Berkeley, used the Hubble Space Telescope to block the blinding light of the star Fomalhaut to resolve a planet orbiting in the star's surrounding disk of dust. The other group, a Canadian team led by Christian Marois of the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in British Columbia, saw not one but three planets around the star HR 8799. They used a method called adaptive optics to sharpen an Earth-based telescope image enough to spot the planetary system. Now, scientists can scan the light from these planets to learn what they are made of, their temperatures, and other intriguing details.

See more images behind the new discoveries in the latest AMNH Astro Bulletin.