Astronomy

Astronomy

The star cluster closest to Earth is in its death throes

Gaia spacecraft observations of stars’ motion within and fleeing the cluster suggest the 680-million-year-old Hyades has only 30 million years left.

Astronomy

This is the first picture of a sunlike star with multiple exoplanets

A first family portrait reveals a weird cousin of the solar system: a star about the mass of the sun orbited — distantly — by two massive gas giants.

Astronomy

Pinning down the sun’s birthplace just got more complicated

Many astronomers think that the sun was born in a loose association of thousands of stars. A new study suggests there’s another possibility.

Astronomy

The closest images of the sun ever taken reveal ‘campfire’ flares

The first images from Solar Orbiter, a NASA-European Space Agency spacecraft, show tiny, never-before-seen flares across the sun’s surface.

Space

This is the most comprehensive X-ray map of the sky ever made

A new X-ray map of the entire sky, using data from the eROSITA telescope’s first full scan, looks deeper into space than any other of its kind.

Space

A newfound exoplanet may be the exposed core of a gas giant

A planet about 734 light-years away could be a former gas giant that lost its atmosphere or a failed giant that never finished growing.

Space

Colliding black holes may have created a surprising flare of light

A flare-up after a gravitational wave outburst may be the first sighting of light from colliding black holes.

Particle Physics

Physicists spot a new class of neutrinos from the sun

Researchers with the Borexino experiment in Italy have detected neutrinos produced in the secondary fusion process taking place in the sun’s core.

Space

LIGO and Virgo detected a collision between a black hole and a mystery object

The first evidence of an object more massive than any neutron star and more lightweight than any black hole has astronomers wondering what it is.

Space

Black hole plasma jets are shaped like bell-bottoms

Jets of high-energy particles change from slightly curved sides to flared cones as they shoot away from galaxies, just like flare-legged pants.

Space

The Milky Way’s giant gas bubbles were seen in visible light for the first time

Variation in the light’s wavelengths could help scientists map the velocity of the gas that makes up the towering structures known as Fermi bubbles.

Space

A Milky Way flash implicates magnetars as a source of fast radio bursts

A bright radio burst seen from a magnetar in the Milky Way suggests that similar objects produce the mysterious fast radio bursts observed in other galaxies.