Astronomy

James Peebles, Michael Mayor and Didier Queloz

Three Win Physics Nobel for Showing Our Place in the Cosmos

Half goes to cosmologist James Peebles for work on cosmic background and dark matter and half goes to the team that discovered the first exoplanet

Researchers Discovered 20 Tiny New Moons Circling Saturn

The ringed planet now takes Jupiter's title for the planet with the most moons

New Organic Compounds Found in Plumes From Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus

Analysis of data from the late, great Cassini spacecraft reveals the moon is spurting oxygen and nitrogen-bearing organic compounds into space

Charlotte Moore Sitterly made huge strides in our understanding of how atoms are structured and what stars, especially our sun, are made of.

How Charlotte Moore Sitterly Wrote The Encyclopedia of Starlight

The "world’s most honored woman astrophysicist" worked tirelessly for decades to measure the makeup of the sun and the stars

Recently Discovered Neutron Star Is Almost Too Massive to Exist

The star J0740+6620 is 2.14 times the mass of our sun but just 12 miles in diameter, approaching the density of a black hole

Based on the speed and trajectory of a newly detected object, astronomers believe it came to our solar system from beyond. This illustration shows the first known interstellar object to fly though our solar system, 'Oumuamua.

Astronomers Spot a Comet That Likely Came From a Different Solar System

After 'Oumuamua, the newly detected rock is just the second known object to visit from interstellar space

The Harvest moon is the full moon each year that falls closest to the autumnal equinox.

A Rare Harvest 'Micromoon' Will Light Up the Sky on Friday the 13th

The United States hasn’t experienced a nation-wide full moon on this superstitious date since 2000

An artist's illustration of the planet K2-18b and another planet, K2-18c, that orbits closer to the parent star. Both planets orbit a red dwarf about 110 light-years from Earth in the constellation Leo.

Water Vapor Detected in the Atmosphere of an Exoplanet in the Habitable Zone

The planet K2-18b, about 110 light-years away, could have swirling clouds and falling rains of liquid water droplets

The green blob of X-rays in the lower left quadrant of the Fireworks galaxy lasted about 10 days before disappearing.

Astronomers Puzzle Over Short-Lived Glowing Green Light Bursts

The ultra luminous X-rays lasted about 10 days in the aptly named Fireworks galaxy

A view of the small crater Yutu recently analyzed.

China Claims Lunar Rover Found a Gel-Like Substance on the Moon

Experts suspect the material may be glass created during a meteorite impact

Astronomers Name Five of Jupiter's New Moons

A contest earlier this year helped determine the names of the new moons—all named after lovers or offspring of the god Jupiter, aka Zeus

Nevada Has a Massive New Dark Sky Sanctuary

The night skies at 100,000-acre Massacre Ridge are some of the starriest in the world

New 3-D Map Shows Milky Way's Big Twist

By mapping the distance of Cepheid stars, researchers reveal that our galaxy is warped

An artist's depiction of Earth during the Archean Eon, from 4 to 2.5 billion years ago, when life consisted of only single-celled microbes with no nucleus (prokaryotes). How these primitive organisms first formed from chemical reactions remains one of the greatest mysteries of science.

Searching for the Key to Life's Beginnings

From exoplanets to chemical reactions, scientists inch closer to solving the great mystery of how life forms from inanimate matter

An artist's visualization of the star S0-2 as it passes by the supermassive black hole at the galactic center. As the star gets closer to the supermassive black hole, it experiences a gravitational redshift that is predicted by Einstein's general relativity. By observing this redshift, we can test Einstein's theory of gravity.

A Star Orbiting in the Extreme Gravity of a Black Hole Validates General Relativity

The star S0-2 gets so close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that it can be used to test our fundamental understanding of gravity

First Moon-Forming Disk Detected Swirling Around an Exoplanet

Telescope observations suggest that a cloud of gas and dust around a planet 370 light-years away may be coalescing into planet-sized moons

Photos Capture the Great South American Eclipse

On July 2, residents of Chile and Argentina witnessed the first total solar eclipse since August 2017

Astronauts Capture Stunning Image of Volcano Erupting for the First Time in 95 Years

The ash plumes from Raikoke reach 42,700 feet

Anaxagoras, who lived in the fifth century B.C., was one of the first people in recorded history to recognize that the moon was a rocky, mountainous body.

An Ancient Greek Philosopher Was Exiled for Claiming the Moon Was a Rock, Not a God

2,500 years ago, Anaxagoras correctly determined that the rocky moon reflects light from the sun, allowing him to explain lunar phases and eclipses

Grand Canyon Will Soon Be a Dark Sky Park

After three years of retrofitting lights, the national park will soon be certified by the International Dark Sky Association

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