Astronomy

Astronomy

Moveable Feast: Milky Way dines on its neighbors

Astronomers have found new evidence that the Milky Way is a cannibal, devouring streams of stars from its nearest galactic neighbors.

Astronomy

Pluto or bust?

A new National Research Council report may revive plans to send a spacecraft to explore Pluto and its neighborhood.

Astronomy

Dying star illuminates its own shroud

Images of a planetary nebula, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997 but only recently assembled as a color composite, show a shroud of material cast off and ionized by the dying, sunlike star Henize 3-401.

Astronomy

X-ray observatory captures a rare supernova

Astronomers have obtained the first portrait of X-ray emission from a rare, so-called Ic supernova.

Astronomy

Let There Be Spin

X-ray outbursts from two different pairs of stars in our Milky Way are providing clues about how the most rapidly rotating stars in the universe got their spin.

Astronomy

Planetary System in the Making? Stellar eclipse hints at planet-forming debris

Astronomers reported the first evidence that a young star is periodically eclipsed by a stream of debris, possibly an orbiting belt of asteroids held in place by a massive, unseen planet.

Astronomy

Outlier Planet: Extrasolar places that are like home

A team of veteran hunters of planets outside the solar system has come up with a landmark finding: a Jupiterlike planet orbiting a Sunlike star at a Jupiterlike distance.

Astronomy

Seeing Red: A cool revival of Hubble’s infrared camera

New images provide a graphic demonstration that the Hubble Space Telescope's infrared vision has been restored.

Astronomy

Rare Find: Odd type of ammonia detected in space

The discovery of deuterated ammonia in space could help astronomers better understand the complex chemistry of dark clouds in star-forming regions.

Astronomy

Cosmic Dawn

New computer simulations suggest that the first stars in the universe were extremely massive and left behind gamma-ray bursts that may already have been detected by telescopes orbiting Earth.

Astronomy

More evidence for a revved-up universe

By studying the clustering pattern of galaxies, astronomers have obtained additional evidence that cosmic expansion is accelerating.

Astronomy

Heavenly Taffy: Galaxies in collision

Astronomers have discovered a pair of colliding galaxies connected by a bridge of high-speed electrons and elongated magnetic fields.