Astronomy

Astronomy

Andromeda’s building blocks

A radio telescope has made the first conclusive observations of gas clouds that could be the leftover building blocks of the Andromeda galaxy, the Milky Way’s closest large spiral neighbor.

Astronomy

Planetoid on the Fringe: Solar system record breaker

Lurking more than 13 billion kilometers from Earth in the coldest, remotest part of the solar system, a newly discovered body is the most distant object ever found to orbit the sun and the largest denizen of the solar system discovered since Pluto.

Astronomy

Nudging asteroid fragments toward Earth

New computer simulations detail how fragments of asteroids travel to Earth and rain down as meteorites.

Astronomy

Invisible Universe

X-ray astronomy opens a new window on the most energetic cosmic events.

Astronomy

Deepest Vision Yet: Hubble takes ultralong look at the cosmos

Astronomers unveiled the deepest visible-light portrait of the universe ever taken, a million-second-long exposure by the Hubble Space Telescope that includes near-infrared images of what appear to be the most-distant galaxies known.

Astronomy

Pulsar pas de deux

Astronomers have for the first time discovered two pulsars orbiting each other, offering the chance for new precision tests of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

Astronomy

Wrenching Findings: Homing in on dark energy

In an analysis of a group of distant supernovas, astronomers have found hints that dark energy is distributed uniformly throughout space.

Astronomy

Finding the star that was

Sifting through archival images, astronomers have identified the star whose explosive demise was recorded by telescopes last year.

Astronomy

Bare-Naked Galaxies

A decade's worth of observations is spotlighting how the vast sea of gas surrounding a cluster of galaxies can alter the shape of a galaxy plowing through it.

Astronomy

Poof goes an atmosphere

Blasted by the heat and radiation from its parent star, a planet 150 light-years from Earth is literally blowing off its atmosphere.

Astronomy

A Habitable Planet

NASA offers kids a chance to search for and build a fictional planet on which people could live. This multimedia, interactive Web site guides students through a sequence of role-playing steps, starting with observations of the effects that changes to Earth can have and what’s needed for survival. Go to: http://astroventure.arc.nasa.gov/

Astronomy

Cosmic afterglow steals the limelight

Thanks to a chance cosmic alignment, researchers appear to have resolved the detailed structure of the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst—even though the parent burst erupted halfway across the universe.