Astronomy News

Apr 13, 2018 by News Staff

So-called circumbinary planets — those planets that orbit around a binary star, like the fictional Tatooine from the Star Wars — can be ejected off into space as a consequence of their stars’ evolution, according to a new study to be published in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint). The findings help explain why astronomers have detected few circumbinary exoplanets despite observing thousands of short-term binary stars, or...

Apr 12, 2018 by News Staff

Stellar-mass black holes that reside in globular clusters — small regions of space, usually at the edges of a galaxy, that are packed with hundreds...

Apr 11, 2018 by News Staff

A series of images from the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet Research (SPHERE) instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile shows dusty...

Apr 10, 2018 by News Staff

A highly-elongated metallic or rocky object — known as 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua — came from another star system, prompting speculation it could...

Apr 10, 2018 by News Staff

A new study indicates that solar tornadoes may have been misnamed because scientists have so far only been able to observe them using 2D images. Composite...

Apr 9, 2018 by News Staff

A new study from Cardiff University suggests there may be a cosmic lack of phosphorus, a crucial ingredient for life. This is a mosaic image, one of the...

Apr 9, 2018 by News Staff

This spectacular view from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope peers into the distant Universe to reveal a massive galaxy cluster called PLCK G308.3-20.2. This...

Apr 6, 2018 by News Staff

New images from the MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile have revealed a ring-shaped structure in the young supernova remnant 1E 0102.2-7219...

Apr 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time precisely measured the distance to one of the oldest objects in the Universe...

Apr 5, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory have discovered what they believe are 12 stellar-mass black holes gathered around Sagittarius A*,...

Apr 5, 2018 by News Staff

Intense radiation from host stars could strip away the ozone layer of Earth-like exoplanets and render them uninhabitable, according to a new study presented...

Apr 4, 2018 by News Staff

Our Milky Way Galaxy, which is approximately 100,000 light-years in diameter, may be getting even bigger, according to a study by the Instituto de Astrofísica...

Apr 4, 2018 by News Staff

A team of astronomers at the University of Southampton, UK, has found 73 rapidly evolving transients — very bright, but quick events — in a...

Apr 3, 2018 by News Staff

A team of European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers looking to better understand the formation history of our Milky Way Galaxy has started creating...

Apr 3, 2018 by News Staff

A blue supergiant star nicknamed Icarus is so far away that its light has taken 9 billion years to reach our planet. It appears to us as it did when the...

Apr 2, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have spotted a so-called Einstein ring, a rare image of a distant galaxy lensed by gravity. This...

Mar 29, 2018 by News Staff

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered a unique galaxy — the first of its kind — that appears to contain virtually...

Mar 28, 2018 by Natali Anderson

An international team of astronomers has discovered a planetary system containing at least three massive planets, orbiting the bright late-G/early-K-type...

Mar 28, 2018 by News Staff

A spectacular image from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory shows an intricate network of gas filaments and dark bubbles in a massive star-forming region...

Mar 27, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope has caught a kind of stellar explosion called a Fast-Evolving Luminous Transient (FELT) in the act. KSN 2015K’s host...