Astronomy

Astronomy

Solar Flip-Flops: Sun storms spawn magnetic reversal

Coronal mass ejections, billion-ton clouds of charged particles blasted from the sun, appear to play a key role in reversing the sun's magnetic poles every 11 years.

Astronomy

Sound of the fury

On Oct. 28, the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft recorded the radio wave "sound" of a powerful solar flare as it raced toward Earth.

Astronomy

Chow Down! Milky Way gobbles its closest known neighbor

A tiny, newly discovered galaxy being shredded by the gravity of the Milky Way is our galaxy's closest known neighbor, residing just 42,000 light-years from the Milky Way's center.

Astronomy

Hot and Heavy Star Birth: Young cosmos delivers massive stars

Aided by a gravitational zoom lens, astronomers have discovered the hottest, brightest, and most crowded star-forming region ever observed.

Astronomy

Out of Hiding: Lost asteroid reappears, bringing surprises

A long-lost asteroid that came close to Earth in 1937 has been spotted again, and its projected path steers clear of Earth.

Astronomy

Cosmic Survey: Galaxy map reveals dark business as usual

The most precise map of how galaxies cluster, pulled together by the tug of gravity, has confirmed that most of the cosmos is in the dark, consisting of 5 percent ordinary matter, 25 percent dark matter, and 70 percent dark energy.

Astronomy

When really big winds collide

A newly released image shows dramatic details of the Crescent nebula, a giant gaseous shell created by outbursts of a massive star about to explode as a supernova.

Astronomy

Vanishing planet

An object orbiting a distant star is too heavy to be a planet, researchers have concluded.

Astronomy

Extrasolar planet gets heavier

An extrasolar planet that tightly orbits its parent star is heavier than astronomers had thought.

Astronomy

Super Data: Hail the cosmic revolution

Ten extremely distant supernovas recently discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope provide evidence that something is pushing objects in the cosmos apart at an ever-faster rate.

Astronomy

Craft finds where sun’s corona gets its hots

New findings may help explain an enduring solar riddle: Although the sun's outer atmosphere lies thousands of kilometers above the visible surface of the sun, it's about 1,000 times hotter.

Astronomy

A Low Note in Cosmos: Sounding out a new role for black holes

Astronomers have for the first time detected sound waves generated by a black hole.