Astronomy
- Astronomy
Solar explosion forms ‘Canyon of Fire’
Just when the sun was looking especially lethargic, a violent eruption left behind a vast chasm of superheated gas on the solar surface.
- Astronomy
Black hole spurts jets of iron and nickel
New observations show that the jets of black hole 4U 1630-47 carry massive particles such as iron and nickel atoms instead of the typical low-mass particles such as electrons.
- Astronomy
Moon’s craters remeasured
Large craters cover more of the moon’s surface on its nearside than its farside, according to new maps from NASA’s GRAIL spacecrafts.
- Astronomy
Strange six-tailed asteroid makes a scene
In September, scientists used the Hubble Space Telescope to image the object and were shocked to see its cometlike appearance.
- Science & Society
Feedback
Our redesigned cover and the astronomy stories from the Oct. 19 issue get readers' reviews.
- Astronomy
Billions and billions of Earth-sized planets call Milky Way home
Using Kepler data, astronomers estimate that a sizeable fraction of the galaxy’s sunlike stars have Earth-sized planets that could support liquid water.
- Astronomy
Giant loner could shift idea of star formation
Observations of WR 102ka suggest it could have been born without any gaseous companions.
- Astronomy
Astronomers explain planets’ backward motion
Giant planets in distant orbits may be reversing the direction of their closer-in neighbors.
- Astronomy
An Earth-sized hell circles faraway star
Kepler-78b, an Earth-sized, extremely hot exoplanet made of rock and iron, is the smallest with known diameter and mass.
- Astronomy
Solar system with seven planets discovered
Kepler data has identified a star with a seven-planet system structured similarly to the sun’s clutch of planets.
- Astronomy
Oort cloud tosses astronomers a cometary curveball
In late November, ISON will deliver debris from the dawn of the solar system to Earth’s doorstep.
- Astronomy
Most distant galaxy discovered
Astronomers have observed a galaxy as it existed 700 million years after Big Bang.
