The telescope technique of adaptive optics is rapidly advancing, allowing unprecedented ground-based views of distant galaxies. 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 speed of star formation from diffuse hydrogen gas has been a subject of strong controversy. Here, AMNH scientists use the rotation rate of a galaxy's spiral arms as compared to the galaxy's gas emission to discover the timescale for star formation.