Astronomy

Astronomy

Gamma-ray burst leaves ephemeral afterglow

A ground-based telescope on automatic pilot has taken one of the earliest images ever recorded of the visible-light afterglow of a gamma-ray burst, one of the most energetic flashes of radiation in the universe.

Astronomy

In the Beginning: Dark matter builds galaxies, feeds quasars

Cosmologists say they have found compelling evidence that massive galaxies were already in place when the universe was less than a billion years old.

Astronomy

Sundancing

Astronomers have solved the mystery of why supergranules—enormous cells of turbulent, charged gas on the sun's surface—appear to move across the sun faster than the sun rotates.

Astronomy

Planet Formation on the Fast Track

New computer simulations suggest that planets as massive as Jupiter may have formed in only a few hundred years rather than several million years, as the leading theory of planet formation requires.

Astronomy

Distant and Strange: Orb isn’t just another extrasolar planet

A novel search technique that could ultimately find Earthlike worlds has uncovered an extrasolar planet that is 30 times farther away than any other planet detected and lies closer to its parent star than does any other orb discovered to date.

Astronomy

Sugarcoated news arrives from space

Scientists spotted a simple sugar in interstellar space for the first time.

Astronomy

Model Tracks Storms from the Sun

Teams of astronomers have developed a reliable method for predicting the time it takes for solar storms to arrive at Earth and have gathered observations confirming a model of how the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, manages to store up enough magnetic energy to induce these upheavals.

Astronomy

Runaway black hole

Observing a black hole and its visible companion star caroming through our galaxy, astronomers have found the best evidence to date that stellar-mass black holes are born during supernova explosions.

Astronomy

News of the Early Universe: Findings from the cosmic microwave background

The most detailed snapshots so far of the infant universe confirm that the cosmos consists mostly of mystery material, called dark energy, that accelerates the universe's expansion.

Astronomy

News of the Early Universe: Findings from the cosmic microwave background

The most detailed snapshots so far of the infant universe confirm that the cosmos consists mostly of mystery material, called dark energy, that accelerates the universe's expansion.

Astronomy

Black holes and galaxies may grow up together

Astronomers have new and, for the first time, quantitative evidence that bigger black holes reside at the centers of bigger galaxies.

Astronomy

Sizing up small stars

Astronomers have for the first time measured with high precision the size of a small star, Proxima Centauri, the known star nearest to the solar system.