Astronomy
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Astronomy
Distant Dust: Asteroid belt or boiling comet?
A swarm of warm dust surrounding a star 41 light-years from Earth may be a sign of the closest extrasolar analog to the solar system's asteroid belt.
- Astronomy
Dark Influence
A study of galaxy clusters tests whether dark matter particles can collide with each other, while other observations show that dark matter doesn't behave as expected near the centers of galaxies.
- Astronomy
Cosmic Primitive: Old star sheds light on early stellar formation
Astronomers have found one of the most chemically primitive stars known, dating to just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang.
- Astronomy
Stellar Question: Extrasolar planet or failed star?
A tiny dot of light next to a young, sunlike star might be the long-sought image of an extrasolar planet.
- Astronomy
Moon story waxes fuller
A new analysis may have put the final piece in the puzzle of how the Moon formed.
- Astronomy
Star Packed: Super cluster is first to be detected in Milky Way
Astronomers have detected the most massive and densest cluster of young stars ever detected in the Milky Way, a finding that could shed light on how stars formed in the early universe.
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- Astronomy
Worlds of Astronomy
British astronomer and writer David Darling has created an impressive, online encyclopedia devoted to topics in astronomy, astrobiology, spaceflight, space physics, and much more. From the Abell cluster to the Zwicky Catalogue, the site provides clear, straightforward explanations of a variety of concepts, along with brief biographies and much other material, including relevant images. Go […]
- Astronomy
Alien Light: Extrasolar planets are detected in new way
Two teams of scientists report that they have for the first time directly detected the glow of planets that circle sunlike stars hundreds of light-years from Earth.
