Astronomy
- Astronomy
One star, five planets
With the discovery of a fifth planet circling the nearby star 55 Cancri, astronomers have found the most abundant—and heaviest—planetary system beyond the sun's.
- Astronomy
Flare-Up: Comet Holmes’ surprise bloom
Comet 17P/Holmes abruptly brightened last month, blossoming into a naked eye object.
- Astronomy
Ray Tracing: Energetic cosmic rays linked to giant black holes
New observations suggest that ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays originate in the cores of nearby galaxies harboring supermassive black holes.
- Astronomy
Gammas from Heaven
An orbiting gamma-ray observatory, set for launch next spring, will seek out the most violent events in the cosmos.
- Astronomy
Odd Couples: Big black holes challenge star theory
The discovery of a black hole almost 16 times as massive as the sun, and the possible discovery of an even heavier one, challenge theories of how such black holes form.
- Astronomy
Record-breaking supernova
A newly discovered supernova, 100 billion times as bright as the sun, is the most luminous ever recorded.
- Astronomy
Motion of two nearby galaxies clouds the picture
The Large and Small Magellanic Clouds are not gravitationally bound to the Milky Way, but are relative newcomers passing by for the first time.
- Astronomy
Sunstruck: Solar hurricanes rip comet’s tail
Images from a spacecraft show a magnetic hurricane from the sun severing a comet's ion tail.
- Astronomy
Match Made in Heaven: Nearby galaxies resemble faraway type
Several nearby galaxies seem nearly identical to some of the remotest galaxies known, offering a glimpse of the era when galaxies first formed.
- Astronomy
Sputnik + 50
The launch of Sputnik 1, 50 years ago, ushered in a scientific and technological revolution, but dreams of the human conquest of space have faded.
- Astronomy
Out-of-focus find
Blurry images yield estimates of the true width of glowing meteor vapor trails in Earth's upper atmosphere.
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