Astronomy

Astronomy

An X-ray glow suggests black holes or neutron stars fuel weird cosmic ‘cows’

With the brightest X-ray glow of a new class of exploding stars, cosmic oddity AT2020mrf boosts evidence of these mysterious blasts’ power source.

Astronomy

An early outburst portends a star’s imminent death

An eruption before a stellar explosion was the first early warning sign for a standard type of supernova.

Astronomy

Astronomers identified a second possible exomoon

Kepler 1708 b i, a newly discovered candidate for an exoplanet moon, has a radius about 2.6 times that of Earth, a new study suggests.

Astronomy

Two stars’ close encounter may explain a cosmic flare that has barely faded

A brilliant outburst of light that has lasted nearly a century arose when two young stars skirted past each other, simulations suggest.

Space

Spacecraft in 2021 set their sights on Mars, asteroids and beyond

This year, a bevy of new missions got under way on Mars and spacecraft prepared to visit asteroids.

Astronomy

The Parker Solar Probe is the first spacecraft to visit the sun’s atmosphere

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe crossed a boundary between the sun’s atmosphere and interplanetary space that has been predicted for decades but never observed.

Astronomy

The only known pulsar duo sheds new light on general relativity and more

Einstein was right, among other insights gleaned from watching a one-of-a-kind system of two pulsating dead stars for 16 years.

Astronomy

The cosmic ‘Cow’ may have produced a new neutron star or black hole

A bright, mysterious blast of extragalactic light appears to have spawned a small, compact object.

Planetary Science

This tiny, sizzling exoplanet could be made of molten iron

A newly discovered exoplanet that whips around its star in less than eight hours is smaller than Earth, as dense as iron and hot enough to melt.

Astronomy

Astronomers have found the Milky Way’s first known ‘feather’

Named for the glacier that feeds India’s longest river, the Gangotri wave spans up to 13,000 light-years and bridges two of our galaxy’s spiral arms.

Astronomy

How massive stars in binary systems turn into carbon factories

A massive star with an orbiting partner star ejects on average twice as much carbon, an element crucial for life, into space compared with a solo star.

Astronomy

Distant rocky planets may have exotic chemical makeups that don’t resemble Earth’s

Elements sprinkled on white dwarf stars suggest that the mantles of faraway rocky worlds differ greatly from their counterparts in our solar system.