Astronomy

Astronomy

Hole in the Middle: Are midsize black holes the missing link?

Two teams of astronomers reported that they had confirmed the existence of a new class of black hole.

Astronomy

Reflecting on the Kuiper belt

A new study suggests that at least some members of the Kuiper belt, the reservoir of comets and other frozen objects that lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, reflect more sunlight and are considerably smaller than previously calculated.

Astronomy

Magnetars: A missing link

A rare group of ultradense stars may be magnetars, objects with the strongest magnetic fields known in the universe.

Astronomy

Birth of a Tiny Galaxy: In the universe, dwarfs may pop up last

Using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe a tiny galaxy still in the process of being born, astronomers are getting a rare glimpse of how larger galaxies formed early in the history of the universe.

Astronomy

An image to relish

The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a high-resolution image of an object that looks like a giant hamburger.

Astronomy

Lonely Universe

In a universe dominated by a mysterious antigravity force, dubbed dark energy, distant galaxies will eventually recede from each other faster than the speed of light and observers in our Milky Way some 50 billion years from now will see only a handful of other galaxies in the sky.

Astronomy

Close Encounter

In mid-August, asteroid 2002 NY40 came within 524,000 kilometers of Earth. Students from Yale University using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory captured a sequence of images of the 700-meter asteroid. Strung together into a movie, these images demonstrate the asteroid’s impressive speed, as seen from Earth over a period of two hours. The […]

Astronomy

X-Ray Chaos: Violence shows itself in a nearby galaxy

New X-ray observations provide additional evidence that Centaurus A, the nearest radio-wave-emitting galaxy to Earth that has a supermassive black hole, is a maelstrom of violence.

Astronomy

Visible Matter: Once lost but now found

New observations confirm that most of the visible matter in the universe lies hidden in vast, hard-to-detect gas clouds between galaxies.

Astronomy

Icy Split: Comet fragments into 19 pieces

A comet has split into 19 fragments strung out along a million-kilometer-long chain.

Astronomy

Cosmic Twist: X’s may mark spots where black holes merge

If whacked by a companion black hole, a big, jet-emitting black hole may spew superhot plasma in a new, crosswise direction.

Astronomy

An assault on comets

Over the next few years, a trio of comet missions, one of which was launched recently, promises to provide the closet look yet at the core of these icy relics from the formation of the solar system.