Astrophysics

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

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 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

Artist's rendering of the planets orbiting PDS 70.

Astronomers Snap a Rare Picture of Two Baby Planets

The Very Large Telescope imaged Planets PDS 70b and PDS 70c about 370 light years away creating a gap in the gas and dust disk around their star

The sixty Starlink satellites before being deployed.

Astronomers Worry New SpaceX Satellite Constellation Could Impact Research

The first of SpaceX's 12,000 Starlink broadband satellites launched last week, raising fears they could interfere with ground-based telescopes

One-Third of Exoplanets Could Be Water Worlds With Oceans Hundreds of Miles Deep

A new statistical analysis suggests seas hundreds of miles deep cover up to 35 percent of distant worlds

Exoplanet Core Orbiting a Dying Star May Help Astronomers Understand What Lies in Store for Our Solar System

It's likely the planetesimal orbiting a white dwarf 410 light years away was the core of a minor planet caught in its immense gravity

Illustration of the GRAPES-3 Muon telescope in a lightning storm.

How Much Electricity Can Thunderstorms Produce?

Researchers used a cosmic ray detector to clock one storm in at a shocking 1.3 billion volts

An ultraviolet image of the Andromeda galaxy, the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way, taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope. Like our own galaxy, Andromeda is a spiral galaxy with a flat rotating disk of stars and gas and a concentrated bulge of stars at the center.

Streams of Stars Snaking Through the Galaxy Could Help Shine a Light on Dark Matter

When the Milky Way consumes another galaxy, tendrils of stellar streams survive the merger, containing clues about the universe's mysterious unseen matter

The positions of the globular clusters used to estimate the mass of the Milky Way.

How Much Does the Milky Way Weigh?

Measurements from the Gaia satellite and Hubble Space Telescope show our galaxy tips the scales at about 1.5 trillion solar masses

That's so metal.

Planetary Smash-Up May Have Produced This Distant Iron Exoplanet

Computer simulations suggest Kepler 107c could have been formed when two rocky planets collided, stripping it down to its metal core

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Astrophysicist Mercedes Lopez-Morales Is Grooming the Next Generation of Planet Hunters

"The Daily Show" correspondent Roy Wood, Jr. talks with the astrophysicist about adrenaline, fear, curiosity and attracting younger generations to science

We Finally Know How Long a Day on Saturn Is

By studying oscillations in the planet's iconic rings, researchers have determined it takes Saturn 10 hours, 33 minutes and 38 seconds to rotate once

Astronomers believe that in the distant future, trillions of years from now, new and exotic types of stars will form across the universe.

Four Types of Stars That Will Not Exist for Billions or Even Trillions of Years

According to models of stellar evolution, certain types of stars need longer than the universe has existed to form

Scientists Predict Sun Will One Day Turn Into Giant Crystal Ball

New observations of white dwarfs confirm theory that the star remnants transition into solid structures as they cool

An artist's conception of the view from Farout.

Meet Farout, the Solar System's Most Distant Minor Planet

Observations suggest the object is 300 miles in diameter, pinkish-red and 3.5 times as far away from the sun as Pluto

Corona image from the Parker Solar Probe

Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun

The Parker Solar Probe survived its first swoop around our star and will get even closer on its next two dozen trips

Extragalactic Background Light

This Is How Much Starlight the Universe Has Produced

4,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 photons over 13.7 billion years

If Light Can't Escape Black Holes, How Do We Get Photos of Them... and More Questions From Our Readers

You asked, we answered

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