Astronomy
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Astronomy
Triple Play: A planet with three suns
Three suns grace the skies above a newly found, Jupiterlike extrasolar planet, posing a puzzle for how massive planets form in a closely-knit, multiple-star system.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Core Finding: Latest, oddest planet hints at how orbs form
A newly discovered planet beyond the solar system has the most massive core of any planet known.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Rumblings from a dead star
The burned-out cinder left behind when a massive Milky Way star exploded recently underwent its own outburst.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Panning Distant Dust
Astronomers are using hundreds of newly detected debris disks found around a variety of nearby stars to hunt for planets and learn about the evolution of our solar system.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Making waves
Locked in a deadly embrace, two white dwarf stars may be the strongest source of gravitational waves now flooding our galaxy.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
The supernova that wasn’t
A brilliant stellar outburst once thought to be a supernova explosion actually left the star intact.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Andromeda gets bigger
A new study reveals that the diameter of the Andromeda galaxy's disk spans some 220,000 light-years, three times as big as had been estimated.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Peering into a disrupted stellar nursery
A new infrared portrait of the Carina nebula star-forming region shows a clutch of baby stars tucked inside pillars of thick dust.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Spotty neutron stars
Astronomers have for the first time discerned hot spots on the surfaces of neutron stars.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Fleeting Flash: Pinpointing a short gamma-ray burst
An invisible, highly energetic flash detected by a spacecraft early this week may have given astronomers their first glimpse of two neutron stars colliding to forge a black hole.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Planetary Picture? Criteria for planethood cloud object’s identity
Astronomers are debating whether an image of a planetary-mass object orbiting a brown dwarf qualifies as the first image of an extrasolar planet.
By Ron Cowen -
Astronomy
Shell of a finding
A new X-ray portrait of a supernova remnant suggests that this shell of hot gas may be hard to discern if the interstellar medium around the exploded star has extremely low density.
By Ron Cowen