gear Push settings
Life on Earth exists on a scale that defies human imagination.
A secret star orbiting Betelgeuse could solve the mystery of its pulsating brightness.
Stars near the Milky Way's core may employ an exotic reaction involving dark matter to extended their lifetimes virtually indefinitely.
Some stars in the chaotic heart of the Milky Way consume one another and it makes them look young again.
Oh, you thought the Sun was big? That's cute.
Here's some of the largest, plumpest stars out there.
These isolated collections of blue stars are puzzling astronomers.
Whether that's good news or not is anyone's guess, though.
By directly measuring the mass of a protoplanetary disc, astronomers have begun to unravel the mystery of planet formation.
Astronomers are no longer in the dark about the dimming of Betegeuse.
A newly conducted in-depth cosmic census has revealed that star-forming molecular clouds come in an array of shapes and sizes.
The vast majority of stars are made almost entirely of hydrogen (about 90%) and helium (about 10%), with trace amounts of heavier elements.
Astronomers have captured stellar winds emitted by aging stars in unprecedented detail.
This spectacular three-star system is radically different than our solar system.
“Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven, blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie
Astronomers have identified a runaway star travelling at an incredible 6 million kilometres per hour, ejected by the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy 5 million years ago.
New research has provided some surprising answers regarding the origins of globular clusters the oldest visible objects in the Universe — some of them may not be so ancient at all.
The galaxy's elderly unexpectedly move faster than stellar younglings.
The planet is so close to its host star that it only has a 5.36 day-long orbit. At this distance, surface temperatures should hover around 428 Kelvin (155 °C; 311 °F).
The findings could topple our current understanding of how galaxies merge.
Stopping just shy of a black hole's density, neutron stars play a dangerous game.
You'll never know what's written in the stars for you if you can't read them.
A really lucky find.
It's small but it will rip you apart using only magnetism.
What we do know is that it blasts enormously powerful X-rays into the void.
Awww, it has your....mass.
Astrophysicists have discovered a new class of exoplanets whose atmospheres and volatile elements have been blown away by the star they're orbiting. Their findings help cover a previously uncharted gap in planetary populations, and offers valuable insight for locating new worlds to colonize.
Research based on recent observations of a nearby gamma-ray burst, GRB 130603B, help explain how gold, silver and other heavy metal atoms are created.
There are two types of galaxies: 'alive' and 'dead' ones. Those galaxies that are still alive are called so because they still produce stars inside, while the dead ones are stripped and devoid of their stellar nurseries. In a case of forensic astronomy of the utmost importance, a team at the University of Cambridge and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh has revealed the leading cause of death for most deceased galaxies of average size: death by strangulation. What remains now is to identify the killer, the researchers say.
Musica Universalis or Music of the Spheres is an philosophical concept which portrays the proportions in the movement of the celestial bodies – the sun, planets, stars and so on – as a form of music. These observable patterns aren’t quite musical, since they lack harmony, but the idea itself has influenced a great of […]
Astronomers have come across something truly amazing. Observations have surprised a protostar – a star in the making – in its earliest stage ever witnessed. The stellar fetus has only accreted about 20 percent of the matter surrounding it and has yet to begin nuclear fusion. Theories regarding star formation are rather well established, however […]
The short answer is, no. Not with the naked eye at least, but if you use a highly potent set of binoculars or a telescope, this is indeed possible. There are a number of accounts, some dating back from ancient times, that tell of how star gazing is possible during the daytime. Various old wives’ tales speak […]
A new research has found that the massively powerful O-type stars, which can be up to 90 times more powerful than our own sun, actually come in pairs most of the time, as a binary system. The two stars wrapper in this dance have a special kind of relationship developed with one another. Thus, one […]
A new study published by researchers at University of Hong Kong has produced controversial waves among the astronomy community, as it claims, backed by sound evidence, that organic matter can be created naturally by stars and travel through out the universe via interstellar dust. It’s somewhat hard to believe, even picture, how organic matter can […]
Yes, you’ve read that right. There are over 50 billion planets in our galaxy alone, according to the Kepler telescope, scientists now estimate that not only there are over 500 bilion planets in the galaxy, but that there are over 500 million life-cable planets out there as well. These numbers obviously come from Nasa’s own […]
The nebula you are looking at is known as the North American nebula, and the pictures were taken with the Spitzer telescope, using an infrared vision; researchers still have some unanswered questions about the group of massive stars thought to be dominating the nebula. The lower left of this first image shows the “baby” stars […]
A supernova is a stellar explosion of cosmic proportions, that often can outshine the entire galaxy it is located in, before fading away in a matter of weeks or months. During this short period however, supernovae emit as much energy as the Sun emits during its entire life span – it’s the same kind of […]
A new study suggests that a blunder of cosmic proportions has been made when estimating the total number of stars in the universe; the research points out that a specific kind of galaxy has 10 times more red dwarf stars than previously estimated. This would not only triple the number of stars throughout the universe, […]
The above photo was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope around mid last year, proving excellent practice for Hubble’s newly installed Wide Field Camera 3. Captioned is the by now famous NGC 3603 nebula, located in the Carina spiral arm – it’s by far one of the most spectacular star forming regions in the Milky […]
Two years ago, researchers reported the strange movement of hundreds of galaxy clusters moving in the same direction at about 3.6 million kilometers per hour. Current spatial movement models can’t explain this in any way, so at the time, they launched a strange hypothesis: clusters are being tugged by the gravity of something outside our […]
It was Thursday night when locals from Norway started to notice a strange, rotating light that just baffled them. It was visible long enough to be seen, photographed and recorded by half of country. The blue light seemed to appear from behind the top of a mountain; it rose, began to spin, then began to […]
You may or may not have heard about blue stragglers; they are blue stars that are hotter and bluer than other stars with the same luminosity. Until now, it seemed that these stars defied most if not all of the standard stellar theories, but scientists now believe they have finally solved this stellar mistery. The […]
Recently, NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope discovered no more, no less than 12 pulsars, and it also detected gamma ray pulse from 18 others. These findings are forcing scientists to rethink what we know about dying stars, as they totally underestimated the power of these stellar cilinders. “We know of 1,800 pulsars, but until Fermi […]
Actually, it’s not about the brightest star of all, but the brightest star in our galaxy. It seems there’s a new contender for the title of Milky Way brightest star; it’s near its dusty center, and infrared observations performed by NASA have revealed how bright it is by piercing the dust that surrounds it. The […]
We have another piece of evidence which goes to show that we fail to understand numerous things about our universe. Astronomers have discovered white dwarf stars with pure carbon atmospheres. It is something that probably nobody would have believed. The exact way these stars evolved is still pretty much a mystery for astrophysicists. They believe […]
