Astronomy

Astronomy

A loopy look at sunspots

In visible light, sunspots look like dark blotches that often expel flares of searing plasma. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory offers a different view.

Astronomy

Super-Earths are not a good place for plate tectonics

The intense pressures inside super-Earths make plate tectonics less likely, new research suggests.

Astronomy

Advice to a baby planet: Avoid black holes

A dust cloud looping around the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole might have once been an infant planet.

Astronomy

X-ray rings reveal neutron star’s distance

Concentric X-ray rings around a neutron star help astronomers triangulate the star’s distance.

Astronomy

Dark galaxies grow in abundance

Nearly 1,000 shadowy galaxies lurk in a nearby cluster, some of which are as massive as the Milky Way and yet have only 0.1 percent the number of stars.

Astronomy

Magnetic ‘glue’ helps shape galaxies

Galaxy-wide magnetic fields may play a role in shaping the spiral arms of gas and stars.

Astronomy

Big exoplanet may be surrounded by helium

Warm Neptune-sized exoplanet might have atmospheres filled with helium.

Astronomy

Mars-sized exoplanet is smallest to have its mass measured

The smallest exoplanet to be weighed is a hot, rocky cousin of the Red Planet.

Astronomy

Pluto at last

Precision matters, whether looking at global temperatures, subatomic particles or the carefully timed approach to a faraway world.

Astronomy

Distant galaxy may contain primeval stars

A stockpile of the first generation of stars might be lighting up gas in a galaxy that existed roughly 800 million years after the Big Bang.

Planetary Science

Rendezvous with Pluto

Earth will get its first good look at Pluto and its five known moons when New Horizons sails past on July 14.

Astronomy

Some of sun’s magnetic fields may act more like forests

A swaying forest of mangrovelike magnetic fields on the sun could be the answer to why the solar atmosphere is millions of degrees hotter than the surface.