Astronomy

Astronomy

When the Magellanic Clouds cozy up to each other, stars are born

The Magellanic Clouds, the two closest star-making galaxies to the Milky Way, owe much of their stellar creativity to each other.

Astronomy

Here’s the best timeline yet for the Milky Way’s big events

A new study puts more precise dates on when the Milky Way formed its thick disk and collided with a neighboring galaxy.

Physics

Levitating plastic beads mimic the physics of spinning asteroids

"Tabletop asteroids," buoyed by sound waves, hint at why some loosely bound space rocks have odd shapes and can’t spin too quickly.

Astronomy

NASA’s exoplanet count surges past 5,000

With a new batch of 60 confirmed exoplanets, the number of known worlds in our galaxy reaches another milestone.

Astronomy

The universe’s background starlight is twice as bright as expected

Images from the New Horizons spacecraft suggest that light from all known galaxies accounts for only half of the cosmos’ visible background glow.

Astronomy

Some of the sun’s iconic coronal loops may be illusions

Folds in the plasma that streams from the sun might trick the eye into seeing the well-defined arches, computer simulations of the solar atmosphere show.

Astronomy

Earth’s purported ‘nearest black hole’ isn’t a black hole

A disputed multiple-star system doesn’t have a black hole, as once reported, but is actually a missing piece in binary star evolution.

Astronomy

A new image captures enormous gas rings encircling an aging red star

The rings, seen for the first time, provide insight into how giant stars lose mass and seed the cosmos with elements.

Astronomy

Astronomers may not have found a sign of the universe’s first stars after all

A new study of radio waves from early in the universe’s history finds no hint of the “cosmic dawn” claimed by an earlier study.

Space

How Russia’s war in Ukraine hinders space research and exploration

A Mars rover, an X-ray telescope and several low-Earth satellites are at risk in response to international sanctions on Russia.

Astronomy

A fast radio burst’s unlikely source may be a cluster of old stars

The burst’s origin in a globular cluster suggests that not all these enigmatic blasts come from young stellar populations.

Astronomy

A rare collision of dead stars can bring a new one to life

These carbon- and oxygen-covered stars may have formed from an unusual merging of two white dwarfs.