381–400 of 607 results
IRS 43's Tilted Disks

Exoplanets

Two Stars, Three Planet-forming Disks

A young pair of stars hosts three potentially planet-forming disks, and all three of them are wildly tilted with respect to each other.

ALMA image of Hubble Ultra Deep Field

Galaxies

ALMA Pans for Galactic Gold in the Hubble Ultra Deep Field

ALMA, the largest telescope array in the world, took a look at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, and revealed the cosmic history of star formation.

Homunculus Nebula

Stellar Science

Did Ancient Explosions Rock Eta Carinae?

New observations suggest this unstable star let off some steam before its famous 19th century “Great Eruption” . . . but there’s more to the story than meets the eye.

Galaxy cluster CL J1001+0220

Cosmology

A Galaxy Cluster Caught in Transition?

Astronomers have caught a galaxy cluster in the prime of its life — perhaps just before it transitions to retirement.

Breakthrough Starshot - screengrab of laser acceleration video

Space Missions

Could Spacecraft Make it to Proxima Centauri?

Dust and gas between stars would pose a threat to spacecraft en route from Earth to the Alpha Centauri system — and scientists are seriously considering the problem now that the prospect of interstellar travel is no longer sci-fi.

Comet Swarm

Stellar Science

Tabby’s Star: Weird Star Gets Weirder

A new study on KIC 8462852, the star of alien megastructure fame, finds yearlong trends that effectively rule out the one working theory astronomers had to explain this strange star.

IceCube neutrino telescope

Cosmology

Search for Fourth Neutrino Goes Cold

The Antarctic observatory known as IceCube has ruled out the existence of a fourth type of neutrino particle — and one-time dark matter contender — known as the light sterile neutrino.

Bottom view of LUX

Cosmology

No Dark Matter from LUX Experiment

An underground detector reports zero detections of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), the top candidate for mysterious dark matter.

Quasi-Periodic Oscillation

Black Holes

Seeing a Black Hole’s Gravitational Vortex

New observations solve a 30-year-old puzzle of mysterious signals from around black holes.

A Chandra/Hitomi view of Perseus Cluster

Cosmology

Doomed Hitomi Gazed at Galaxy Cluster

In its first — and final — month of flight, the Hitomi X-ray observatory measured the calm within the bubbling core of the Perseus Cluster.

K2-33b

Exoplanets

Newborn Exoplanets Point to Early Chaos

A recent glut of exoplanet research reveals the early chaos that helped shape planetary systems.

Propylene Oxide, chiral molecule

Astrobiology

First Chiral Molecule Discovered in Space

The discovery of a chiral molecule in space has the potential to sort out one of the biggest mysteries in the chemistry of life.

Gas disk around HL Tau

Exoplanets

The Gaseous Footprints of Baby Planets

Astronomers re-analyzed two-year-old data from the ALMA observatory in Chile and discovered gas gaps that probably indicate baby planets in the disk around a young star.

Stellar Science

The Resurgence of the Brightest Supernova

In 2015 ASASSN-15lh gained fame as the most luminous supernova ever discovered. Almost a year later and against all odds, the supernova has rebrightened.

Exoplanets

Kepler’s 1,284 Newly Confirmed Planets

Even though Kepler’s primary mission ended three years ago, the data it collected just revealed a mother lode: 1,284 newly confirmed planets.

Protoplanetary disk

Stellar Science

Light Echoes Map Planet-forming Disk

Light’s finite speed helped astronomers pinpoint the location of the “inner wall” of the disk of dust and gas that’s feeding a fast-growing baby star.

TRAPPIST-1 planet system artist's illustration

Exoplanets

Earth-size Planets Around Nearby Dwarf Star

Astronomers just discovered three planets, two of which are roughly the size of Earth, orbiting a dim nearby dwarf star. Their proximity makes their atmospheres ripe for observing.

Hypervelocity Binary System

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.

Space Missions

NASA's Kepler Spacecraft Recovered from Emergency Mode

The Kepler team unexpectedly found the planet-hunting spacecraft in emergency mode on April 7th, but with the spacecraft recovered, hopes are high that its newest search, this time for rogue planets, is still on. Read on to see how amateur observations can help!

Gravitational Lens SDP.81

Galaxies

Dark Dwarf Galaxy Discovered

Astronomers using the ALMA array of radio dishes have detected a dwarf galaxy 4 billion light-years away by the pull of its dark matter.

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