Saturn’s Rings Relatively New, Formed Much Later Than The Planet
The rings of Saturn may be iconic, but there was a time when the majestic gas giant existed without its distinctive halo. In fact, the…
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The rings of Saturn may be iconic, but there was a time when the majestic gas giant existed without its distinctive halo. In fact, the…
By looking at the Moon, the most complete and accessible chronicle of the asteroid collisions that carved our young solar system, a group of scientists…
The end of a star’s life can occur in a tranquil manner in the case of low mass stars, such as the Sun. This is…
This movie shows the propeller-like rotation of Ultima Thule in the seven hours between 20:00 UT (3 p.m. ET) on Dec. 31, 2018, and 05:01…
An international consortium of scientists studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) as part of the POLAR (GRB polarimeter) experiment has revealed that high-energy photon emissions from black…
Supermassive black holes weigh millions to billions times more than our sun and lie at the center of most galaxies. A supermassive black hole several…
New research that included astronomers Luca Matra and David J. Wilner of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center For Astrophysics has found the first confirmed example of a…
Astronomers have discovered behavior by a jet from a giant black hole that has never been seen before. Using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory they have…
This huge ball of stars — around 100 billion in total — is an elliptical galaxy located some 55 million light-years away from us. Known…
Data captured by ESA’s galaxy-mapping spacecraft Gaia has revealed for the first time how white dwarfs, the dead remnants of stars like our Sun, turn…
Before the scientific discoveries made using ESO telescopes can find themselves on your screen, they pass through the expert hands of talented visual artists and…
Many stars explode as luminous supernovae when, swollen with age, they run out of fuel for nuclear fusion. But some stars can go supernova simply…
Pulse pattern suggests distant black hole must be spinning at least at 50 percent the speed of light. On Nov. 22, 2014, astronomers spotted a…
A brief and unusual flash spotted in the night sky on June 16, 2018, puzzled astronomers and astrophysicists across the globe. The event — called…
Researchers have discovered the brightest quasar yet known, detected from the period when the universe’s star-making hydrogen gas became ionized, known as “reionization.” The international…
Nuzzled in the chest of the constellation Virgo (the Virgin) lies a beautiful cosmic gem — the galaxy Messier 61. This glittering spiral galaxy is aligned face-on…
Galaxy mergers—in which two galaxies join together over billions of years in sometimes-dramatic bursts of light—aren’t always easy for astronomers to spot. Now, scientists from…
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has found three confirmed exoplanets, or worlds beyond our solar system, in its first three months of observations. The…