Hot gas fountains and the galactic spa

here's a new article that came out today about new data confirming a mechanism where hot gas bursts out of the Milky Way's disc and into the galactic halo, giving rise to so-called galactic fountains:

New evidence for supernova-driven galactic fountains in the Milky Way

Observing the X-ray-bright gas in the halo of the Milky Way, ESA's XMM-Newton has gathered new data which favour a process involving fountains of hot gas in our Galaxy. Such a scenario, with the gas flowing from the galactic disc into the halo where it then condenses into cooler clouds and subsequently falls back to the disc, confirms the importance of supernova explosions in forging the evolution of the interstellar medium and of the entire Galaxy. More...

Image credits: ESA

lenses in the sky – without diamonds

and finally a new story about cosmology and a good old friend of yours truly, i.e. gravitational lensing... yay!

New method reveals gravitationally lensed galaxies in Herschel-ATLAS first survey

Astronomers using early data from one of the largest projects to be undertaken with the ESA Herschel Space Observatory have demonstrated that virtually all bright sub-millimetre galaxies in the distant Universe are subject to gravitational lensing, which amplifies their flux thus easing their detection and characterisation. Analysis of less than three per cent of the entire Herschel-ATLAS survey, which probes the distant and hidden Universe, yielded a first sample of five lensed galaxies and paves the way for the compilation, in the near future, of a rich catalogue of distant, star-forming and dust-obscured galaxies. More...

Image credits: ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech/Keck/SMA