Milky Way

If dark matter comes in both matter and antimatter varieties, it might accumulate inside dense stars to create black holes
 

Unexplained gamma rays streaming from the galactic center may have been produced by dark matter, but more mundane explanations are also possible
 

…living in a place that makes doing cosmology hard. Let’s backtrack a little. Unless you’ve been living under a particularly thick and insulating rock you’ll know that in recent months the world of experimental cosmology (what would have previously been called observational cosmology, or just plain old astronomy) has been on tenterhooks waiting to see [...]

Cosmic dust is crucial to the birth of stars and planets, but how so much of it came to be present in the young universe has been a mystery

Mysterious light at the center of the milky way could be our first look at dark particles

Newly discovered lobes stretch tens of thousands of light-years above and below the Milky Way's disk. Where they come from remains a mystery

Five remarkable stars on the other side of our galaxy promise new insight into the outer reaches of our home turf

For the past year, astronomers around the world have been watching the center of the Milky Way in anticipation of a once-per-eon event. Right around now (or, technically, 24,000 years ago--that's roughly how far away the galactic center is in light years), a cloud of gas and dust plummeting toward our galaxy's supermassive black hole, [...]

Excess gamma-ray light at the galactic center may indicate invisible dark matter particles
 

The image you see here is a computer-generated model of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, which we call Sagittarius A*. More precisely, it is a model of the "shadow" that Sagittarius A*, with its mass of four million suns, should cast.

Do yourself a favor. Don't read this article just yet--first, take a moment to zoom around this incredible panorama of our galaxy and soak in the splendor: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/glimpse360/aladin.

Small galaxies orbiting the Milky Way may have arrived via dark matter superhighways stretching across the universe