Chandra Discovers White Dwarf Stars and Other Exotic Binaries in 47 Tucanae
Cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) are white dwarf stars that are accreting from an orbiting, low-mass binary companion star. The accretion is facilitated by the proximity…
Cataclysmic variable stars (CVs) are white dwarf stars that are accreting from an orbiting, low-mass binary companion star. The accretion is facilitated by the proximity…
Astronomers are back in the dark about what dark matter might be, after new observations showed the mysterious substance may not be interacting with forces…
Witness the most spectacular and mysterious depths of the cosmos through Hubble’s eye. These unique images are some of the best ever captured by the…
A Columbia University-led team of astrophysicists has discovered a dozen black holes gathered around Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), the supermassive black hole in the center…
New images from ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other telescopes reveal a rich landscape of stars and glowing clouds of gas in one…
Astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have for the first time precisely measured the distance to one of the oldest objects in the universe, a…
Astronomers have used Chandra to study a gigantic and resilient “cold front” in the Perseus galaxy cluster. This structure spans about 2 million light years,…
An international team of researchers has imaged newly forming jets of plasma from a massive black hole with unprecedented accuracy. Radio images made with a…
In the first fractions of a second after the birth of our universe, not only elementary particles and radiation, but also magnetic fields were generated….
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found the most distant star ever discovered. The hot blue star existed only 4.4 billion years after…
The slow fade of radioactive elements following a supernova allows astrophysicists to study them at length. But the universe is packed full of flash-in-the-pan transient…
Galaxies and dark matter go together like peanut butter and jelly. You typically don’t find one without the other. Therefore, researchers were surprised when they…
Astronomers have discovered a rare “runaway” star that is speeding across its galaxy at 300,000 miles (480,000 kilometers) per hour (at that speed it would…
The first interstellar object ever seen in our solar system, named ‘Oumuamua, is giving scientists a fresh perspective on the development of planetary systems. A…
Astronomer Ed Shaya was in his office looking at data from NASA’s Kepler space telescope in 2012 when he noticed something unusual: The light from…
A cloud of gas 300,000 light-years long is arching around the Milky Way, shunted away from two dwarf galaxies orbiting our own. For decades, astronomers…
On the outskirts of our galaxy, a cosmic tug-of-war is unfolding—and only NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope can see who’s winning. The players are two dwarf…
There is a process at work in most galaxies that affects both the central black hole mass as well as the galaxy’s global velocity structure…