Scientists Discover Two Gravitationally Lensed Quasars
The path of light is bent by mass, an effect predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity, and when a massive galaxy or cluster lies along…
The path of light is bent by mass, an effect predicted by Einstein’s theory of gravity, and when a massive galaxy or cluster lies along…
A new model is bringing scientists a step closer to understanding the kinds of light signals produced when two supermassive black holes, which are millions…
We are all, quite literally, made of stardust. Many of the chemicals that compose our planet and our bodies were formed directly by stars. Now,…
The most luminous galaxy in the universe has been caught in the act of stripping away nearly half the mass from at least three of…
In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as ‘Oumuamua — the first known interstellar object to visit our solar…
Most galaxies lie in clusters containing from a few to thousands of other galaxies. Our Milky Way, for example, belongs to the Local Group cluster…
The new peer-reviewed study of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), which is a tiny fraction of the size and mass of the Milky Way galaxy,…
The sun, like all stars, was born in a giant cold cloud of molecular gas and dust. It may have had dozens or even hundreds…
The entire history of human existence is a tiny blip in our solar system’s 4.5-billion-year history. No one was around to see planets forming and…
A billion light-years from Earth lies one of the universe’s most massive structures, a giant elliptical galaxy surrounded by a sprawling cluster of other galaxies…
Engineers and scientists gathered around a screen in an operations room at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., eager to lay their eyes on…
Stellar variability has long offered insights into stars’ physical properties. The star Mira (Omicron Ceti), for example, was so-named in 1596 by Dutch astronomers who…
ESA’s Gaia mission has made a major breakthrough in unraveling the formation history of the Milky Way. Instead of forming alone, our Galaxy merged with…
ESO’s exquisitely sensitive GRAVITY instrument has added further evidence to the long-standing assumption that a supermassive black hole lurks in the center of the Milky…
After nine years in deep space collecting data that indicate our sky to be filled with billions of hidden planets – more planets even than…
The young star Eta Carinae shines prominently in the skies of the southern hemisphere. Although located relatively far away from Earth (about seven thousand light-years…
Polarimetric investigation of a near-Earth asteroid Phaethon was carried out in December 2017 on its closest approach to the Earth. The study was conducted in…
An international team of astronomers have discovered two stars in a binary pair that complete an orbit around each other in a little over three…