SUNSET: 
Peculiar Pulsar Throws “Cosmic Cannonballs”
Astronomers think a city-size star that’s spinning faster than a kitchen blender is shooting out plasma torpedoes.
Fast Radio Burst Roundup
They’re powerful, they’re fast, and we aren’t sure about what causes them, but astronomers are closer than ever to understanding the source of mysterious fast radio bursts.
Surf’s Up: Waves Might Be Breaking on This Star
An unusual star system that brightens and fades every month might have giant plasma waves breaking on its surface.
Astronomers Find Strange Star Is a Powerful Magnet
Astronomers have found a star that has a magnetic field rivaling the strongest magnet humans have ever built — and it might explain the origin of highly magnetic cinders known as magnetars.
Webb Views the Ring Nebula and Earendel in a New Light
This week, James Webb Space Telescope reveals new details in the Ring Nebula and shows that the most distant known star isn't alone. Meanwhile, patient astronomers have collected 17 years' worth of images of the super-Jupiter Beta Pictoris b.
Astronomy in Pictures: The Birth of Stars and Planets
Images capture the birth of stars and planets in multiple results from space- and ground-based telescopes.
A Jekyll-Hyde White Dwarf
The white dwarf J2033 seems to switch rapidly between two compositions.
Astronomers Find Mysterious, Slowly Pulsing Star
An unidentified source has been beaming out a pulse of radio waves every 22 minutes since 1988.
Could Axions Help Fast Radio Bursts Escape a Magnetar’s Grasp?
New research proposes a way for fast radio bursts to escape the confines of a magnetized star and jet out into space — by getting help from theoretical particles called axions.
Explore the Night with Bob King
Time-lapse Animations Reveal a Universe in Transformation
Deep-sky objects may appear static throughout our lifetime but by carefully "blinking" archival and current images we can discern real changes in their appearance.
Could Supermassive Stars Explain How This Galaxy Got Its Nitrogen?
Supermassive stars might explain the unusual amounts of nitrogen in one of the most distant known galaxies, GN-z11.
How Soon Will Betelgeuse Blow?
A new study making the rounds predicts that supergiant Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova sooner rather than later, but others are urging caution.
We Could Soon “Hear” the Gravitational Waves of Dying Stars
Massive, dying stars — behemoths tens of times the Sun's mass — should emit gravitational waves that we can hear with LIGO.
Radio Waves Unveil Supernova Origin
Astronomers have observed an unusual supernova, in which a helium star fed a white dwarf until it exploded.
Astronomers Find the Remains of the Universe’s First Stars
The first stars are too faint and far away to detect directly, but their gaseous remains can be seen absorbing the light of distant galaxies.
Mystery Bursts Give Astronomers a View into Galaxy Halos
Flashes of radio waves — whose exact sources are still a bit of a mystery — are helping astronomers learn about the hot gas that surrounds the Milky Way.
Focusing on the Brightest Gamma-ray Burst of All Time
Gamma-ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe, and we’ve learned much about these superlative outbursts since their discovery in 1967.
Catch Birth Flickers of Budding Suns in Orion
Three flickering stars in Orion offer insight into what life looks like before the main sequence.
White Dwarf Survived 850-year-old Supernova
A supernova that skywatchers in the Far East observed almost 850 years ago has produced the most unusual remnant astronomers have ever found
Astronomers Spot A Tiny Binary System
A tiny binary system is not only small but also ancient, billions of years older than other such systems, which raises questions about its origins.
