Astronomy

Astronomy

Close Encounter

In mid-August, asteroid 2002 NY40 came within 524,000 kilometers of Earth. Students from Yale University using a telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory captured a sequence of images of the 700-meter asteroid. Strung together into a movie, these images demonstrate the asteroid’s impressive speed, as seen from Earth over a period of two hours. The […]

Astronomy

X-Ray Chaos: Violence shows itself in a nearby galaxy

New X-ray observations provide additional evidence that Centaurus A, the nearest radio-wave-emitting galaxy to Earth that has a supermassive black hole, is a maelstrom of violence.

Astronomy

Visible Matter: Once lost but now found

New observations confirm that most of the visible matter in the universe lies hidden in vast, hard-to-detect gas clouds between galaxies.

Astronomy

Icy Split: Comet fragments into 19 pieces

A comet has split into 19 fragments strung out along a million-kilometer-long chain.

Astronomy

Cosmic Twist: X’s may mark spots where black holes merge

If whacked by a companion black hole, a big, jet-emitting black hole may spew superhot plasma in a new, crosswise direction.

Astronomy

An assault on comets

Over the next few years, a trio of comet missions, one of which was launched recently, promises to provide the closet look yet at the core of these icy relics from the formation of the solar system.

Astronomy

Moveable Feast: Milky Way dines on its neighbors

Astronomers have found new evidence that the Milky Way is a cannibal, devouring streams of stars from its nearest galactic neighbors.

Astronomy

Pluto or bust?

A new National Research Council report may revive plans to send a spacecraft to explore Pluto and its neighborhood.

Astronomy

Dying star illuminates its own shroud

Images of a planetary nebula, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1997 but only recently assembled as a color composite, show a shroud of material cast off and ionized by the dying, sunlike star Henize 3-401.

Astronomy

X-ray observatory captures a rare supernova

Astronomers have obtained the first portrait of X-ray emission from a rare, so-called Ic supernova.

Astronomy

Let There Be Spin

X-ray outbursts from two different pairs of stars in our Milky Way are providing clues about how the most rapidly rotating stars in the universe got their spin.

Astronomy

Planetary System in the Making? Stellar eclipse hints at planet-forming debris

Astronomers reported the first evidence that a young star is periodically eclipsed by a stream of debris, possibly an orbiting belt of asteroids held in place by a massive, unseen planet.