SUNSET: 
Top 12 Astronomy News Stories of 2016
From the discovery of gravitational waves to the building evidence that a massive planet could exist beyond Pluto, it has been a thrilling year for astronomy research. We recap.
Astronomers Map Milky Way in Incredible Detail
Astronomers have mapped neutral atomic hydrogen, which profuses the space between stars, in unprecedented detail to create a beautiful radio-wavelength portrait of the Milky Way.
Cloud Punches Hole in Milky Way
An intergalactic cloud has slammed into the Milky Way Galaxy and left a big hole.
Milky Way's New Neighbor: A Giant Dwarf
Astronomers have discovered a “feeble giant”: one of the largest dwarf galaxies ever seen around the Milky Way.
Speedy Stars Weigh Milky Way’s Dark Matter Halo
It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a . . . pair of hypervelocity stars? The surprising stellar duo may place constraints on the mass of our galaxy’s unseen dark matter halo.
Galactic Archaelogy in the Milky Way Halo
The motions of thirteen stars in our galaxy’s halo outline a shell-like structure, perhaps the remains of an ancient galactic collision.
A Cold New View of the Milky Way Galaxy
A stunning submillimeter mosaic of the Milky Way Galaxy captures a portrait of the cold dust and gas swirling along the galactic plane.
A Galaxy Hit-and-Run
Ripples found in the Milky Way’s disk reveal our galaxy survived an ancient hit-and-run. Now, astronomers might have caught the culprit.
Charting 70,000 Stars in the Milky Way
Astronomers have created an age-map of 70,000 stars spanning our galaxy, ushering in a new era of galactic archaeology.
Our “Magnetic” Black Hole
Astronomers have detected magnetic fields writhing around the Milky Way's central black hole.
Star-Counting in the Galactic Bulge
Astronomers have taken a careful census of the smallest stars in our galaxy’s center.
Milky Way: Young Stars in an Old Bulge
The presence of stars just 100 million years old in the Milky Way Galaxy’s central regions confirms our galaxy’s nonviolent past.
Buckyballs Solve Interstellar Mystery
Soccer ball-shaped molecules lurking in the dusty corners of the Milky Way help resolve a long-standing problem.
Witnessing Light Echoes from a Neutron Star
X-ray echoes from binary star system Circinus X-1 are helping astronomers measure its distance from Earth.
Mapping the Outer Milky Way
Stars still embedded in their natal clouds act as signposts to map the Sagittarius-Carina, Perseus, and Outer spiral arms of the Milky Way.
Mysterious X-rays Spotted in Galactic Center
NASA’s NuSTAR mission has detected an unexpected haze of high-energy X-rays in our galaxy’s center, perhaps the signal of a mass stellar graveyard.
Ripples in the Milky Way
Astronomers have detected what look like four undulations in the Milky Way Galaxy’s disk. If the structures are all part of the disk, our galaxy is more than half again as large as we thought it was.
New Stars On Strange Orbits in Milky Way
Astronomers have found two just-born star clusters an incredible 16,000 light-years above the plane of the Milky Way galaxy.
New Stars in the Shadow of a Black Hole
New observations suggest that several dozen low-mass stars, and eventually perhaps even planets, are forming just 2 light-years from our galaxy’s supermassive black hole.
Cepheids Map Milky Way - and Beyond
Cepheid variable stars are helping astronomers see what our galaxy looks like from within.
