Astronomy
- Astronomy
A possible signal from Polar Lander
Astronomers may have heard a faint signal from the vanished Mars Polar Lander spacecraft last month but, as of mid-February, have not detected another.
- 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
Revved-Up Universe
Astronomers are busy testing the seemingly bizarre notion that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.
- Astronomy
Solar magnetism: Memories are made of this
Despite all its upheavals, the sun's magnetic field has a built-in memory, allowing it to return to its original position and configuration.
- Astronomy
Milky Way gets a new layer
Astronomers propose that 150 billion corpses of sunlike stars may blanket the visible disk of the galaxy.
- 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.
- 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.
