When galaxies form new stars, they sometimes do so in frantic episodes of activity known as starbursts. These events were commonplace in the early Universe, but are rarer in nearby galaxies.
Peering deep into the past, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have identified seven primitive galaxies that formed more than 13 billion years ago, when the universe was less than three percent of its present age.
German astronomers have created an artificial intelligence algorithm to help chart and explain the structure and dynamics of the universe more accurately than ever before.
Volunteers in the Galaxy Zoo project have been helping to classify galaxies seen in hundreds of thousands of telescope images as spiral or elliptical - and have, along the way, found 26 which resemble the letters of the alphabet.
NASA's discovered several million new black holes - along with a thousand or so galaxies obscured by dust - using the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope.
Astronomers have confirmed the existence of a 'bridge' of hydrogen gas connecting two of our neighboring galaxies, indicating that they may once have brushed together.
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several quasars acting as gravitational lenses, making it easier to study the galaxies in which they're contained.
Astronomers analyzing data from NASA's Hubble Telescope have identified what seems to be a clump of dark matter left behind from a collision between massive clusters of galaxies.
Galaxies are running out of the basic building blocks of stars. The universe is forming fewer stars than it used to, and an Australian research team says the reason is a shortage of molecular hydrogen.
Many of the Milky Way's ancient stars derive from other smaller galaxies torn apart by violent galactic collisions, say researchers at Durham University.
There's slow developers everywhere, and the Hubble space telescope has discovered the astronomical equivalent: a group of small, ancient galaxies that have waited 10 billion years to get round to building a large elliptical galaxy.
