All Stories by Christopher Crockett
- Astronomy
Massive black hole lurks in lightweight galaxy
A heavyweight black hole grew to weigh as much as 7 billion suns within the first 2 billion years after the Big Bang.
- Astronomy
Exploding star breaks record for brightest supernova
A recent supernova shines with the light of 600 billion suns.
- Planetary Science
Pluto is only a ‘day’ away
Just one Pluto-day to go until New Horizons tears past the dwarf planet and its moons.
- Planetary Science
New Horizons recovers from overload, is on track for Pluto flyby
New Horizons transmits the best pictures of Pluto to date shortly before the spacecraft went quiet over the weekend.
- Astronomy
Beta Pictoris planet makes waves
Spiral waves whip through the belt of debris around a young star — and it’s all a giant planet’s fault.
- Planetary Science
Pluto may have spots the size of Missouri
Dark spots emerge on the surface of Pluto in recent images from the New Horizons spacecraft.
- Astronomy
A loopy look at sunspots
In visible light, sunspots look like dark blotches that often expel flares of searing plasma. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory offers a different view.
- Earth
Leap second helps us with the reality of time
A leap second will be inserted at the end of the day on June 30.
- Astronomy
Advice to a baby planet: Avoid black holes
A dust cloud looping around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole might have once been an infant planet.
- Astronomy
X-ray rings reveal neutron star’s distance
Concentric X-ray rings around a neutron star help astronomers triangulate the star’s distance.
- Planetary Science
50 years ago, Mariner 4 sent back first pictures from Mars
On July 14, 1965, Mariner 4 became the first spacecraft to fly by Mars. The probe also sent back the first pictures of another planet taken from space.
- Astronomy
Dark galaxies grow in abundance
Nearly 1,000 shadowy galaxies lurk in a nearby cluster, some of which are as massive as the Milky Way and yet have only 0.1 percent the number of stars.
