Astronomy

Astronomy

Hubble Highlights a Riddle: What’s the source of quick-return comets?

New observations from the Hubble Space Telescope demonstrate that scientists don't know where a major class of comets comes from.

Astronomy

Stellar Tantrums: Tracking the flaring cycles of other stars

Astronomers are closely tracking the ebb and flow of magnetic activity and powerful flares on stars other than the sun.

Astronomy

Black Hole Life Preserver: Don’t get sucked in without one

By temporarily counteracting a black hole's tremendous tidal forces, a proposed black hole life preserver would slightly lengthen the life and shorten the agony of anyone exploring one of these gravitational beasts.

Astronomy

Ulysses makes a return trip

Just as the sun has reached the stormy peak of its 11-year activity cycle, the European Space Agency's Ulysses spacecraft has begun its second and final pass over the sun's poles.

Astronomy

Magnetic-mapping mission resurrected

The European Space Agency successfully launched Cluster II, a group of four spacecraft that will fly in tandem to generate a three-dimensional map of Earth's magnetosphere.

Astronomy

Spirograph in the sky

Some 2,000 light-years from Earth, an elderly star has ejected its outer layers to form a puffy, gaseous cocoon that resembles a "spirograph" pattern.

Astronomy

It’s Raining Stardust: Spacecraft measures record amount of stellar debris

Stardust is sneaking into our solar system at three times the rate that it had just 4 years ago, and the influx of dust could triple through 2010.

Astronomy

Stellar speed limit

Ripples in the fabric of space-time may put the brakes on the fastest-spinning stars in the universe and prevent them from flying apart.

Astronomy

Swallow Thy Neighbor: Strong evidence of galactic cannibalism

Astronomers have found a compelling case of a large galaxy caught in the act of eating a small fry.

Astronomy

Repulsive Astronomy: Strengthening the case for dark energy

Astronomers have found new evidence that a mysterious substance, dubbed dark energy, is ripping the cosmos apart, causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster rate.

Astronomy

Taking the Crab’s pulse

Simultaneous recordings of a pulsar's radio emissions and its visible beam shed new light on the seemingly chaotic variations in the intensities of those emissions.

Astronomy

Sky Prospecting: Surveying the universe’s middle-aged galaxies

With a new sky survey, astronomers can tell the story of what happened during the universe’s middle years—about 7 billion years ago.