All Stories by Christopher Crockett
- Astronomy
Pair of stars buzzed the solar system 70,000 years ago
Astronomers discover a binary system that made the closest known flyby of the sun.
- Astronomy
Closest star approach to the sun
Astronomers discover a binary system that made the closest known flyby of the sun.
- Planetary Science
Enceladus ocean may resemble Antarctic lake
The pH of a subsurface sea on a moon of Saturn resembles an ice-covered lake in Antarctica where microbial mats thrive.
- Astronomy
Stellar nursery gives birth to quadruplets
Four young stars, still in their cocoons, show that binary and other multiple star systems form together.
- Astronomy
White dwarf pair will trigger a supernova — in 700 million years
Astronomers found two white dwarfs with enough mass to explode as a supernova.
- Astronomy
First stars born later than thought
New results from the Planck mission indicate that the first stars began to shine 550 million years after the Big Bang.
- Astronomy
Asteroids or planets might trigger a supernova
Rocky debris falling onto a white dwarf might trigger some supernovas.
- Planetary Science
New Horizons snaps new photos of Pluto
Pluto and its moon Charon appear as two smudges in the first pictures taken since New Horizons came out of hibernation.
- Astronomy
Giant rings encircle young exoplanet
Stretching 90 million kilometers from their center, 37 stripes of dust around exoplanet were probably crafted by moons.
- Astronomy
Neptune-like worlds could become habitable
Mini-Neptunes can drift toward their stars and lose their atmospheres, leaving behind ice-rich rocky cores that can become watery worlds.
- Astronomy
Oldest solar system unearthed by Kepler
Five rocky planets orbit the 11.2-billion-year-old star Kepler 444, suggesting that Earth-sized worlds formed in the early universe.
- Planetary Science
Large asteroid buzzes Earth
Asteroid 2004 BL86 swings by Earth today at three times the distance to the moon, the closest asteroid encounter until 2027.
