Galactic Archaeology: Supercomputers Dig Into First Star Fossils
No one has yet found the first stars. They’re hypothesized to have formed about 100 million years after the Big Bang out of universal darkness…
Stars
First of Their Kind “Shell Structures” Found in Milky Way – Evidence of Galactic Collision
Evidence of broadside collision with dwarf galaxy discovered in Milky Way. Nearly 3 billion years ago, a dwarf galaxy plunged into the center of the…
Strangely Behaving Red Supergiant Betelgeuse Smaller and Closer Than First Thought
It may be another 100,000 years until the giant red star Betelgeuse dies in a fiery explosion, according to a new study by an international…
Finding Lost Star Siblings: Star Clusters Are Only the Tip of the Iceberg
“Clusters form big families of stars that can stay together for large parts of their lifetime. Today, we know of roughly a few thousand star…
Star’s Death by Spaghettification: Shredded by Black Hole As Astronomers Record
A rare blast of light, emitted by a star as it is sucked in by a supermassive black hole, has been spotted by scientists using…
Extreme Magnetic Fields and Temperature Variation of Distant Magnetars
New research is helping to explain one of the big questions that has perplexed astrophysicists for the past 30 years — what causes the changing…
Hubble Space Telescope Captures a frEGGS-Plosion of Star Formation
This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, depicts a special class of star-forming nursery known as Free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules, or frEGGs for…
Death by Spaghettification: Telescopes Record Last Moments of Star Devoured by a Black Hole
Using telescopes from the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and other organizations around the world, astronomers have spotted a rare blast of light from a star…
Astronomers Turn Up the Heavy Metal to Shed Light on Star Formation – “It’s Absolutely Mind-Blowing Stuff”
Astronomers from The University of Western Australia’s node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) have developed a new way to study star…
XMM-Newton Space Observatory Spies Youngest Baby Pulsar Ever Discovered
An observation campaign led by ESA’s XMM-Newton space observatory reveals the youngest pulsar ever seen – the remnant of a once-massive star – that is…
Understanding Our Place in the Universe: Math Professor Verifies Centuries-Old Conjecture About Formation of the Solar System
Using a limited set of mathematical equations, Worcester Polytechnic Institute mathematical sciences professor Mayer Humi said he has confirmed a 224-year-old math conjecture about the…
ALMA Reveals Magnetic Fields in the Early Stages of Massive Star Formation
Star formation in molecular clouds usually occurs in a two-step process. Supersonic flows first compress the clouds into dense filaments light-years long, after which gravity…
Mesmerizing Shapes of Planetary Nebulae Explained: Stellar Winds Around Aging Stars Captured in Unprecedented Detail
Astronomers present an explanation for the mesmerizing shapes of planetary nebulae. The discovery is based on an extraordinary set of observations of stellar winds around…
A White Dwarf’s Surprise Planetary Companion: First-of-Its-Kind Exoplanet Detected Around Dead Star
For the first time, an intact, giant exoplanet has been discovered orbiting close to a white dwarf star. This discovery shows that it is possible…
Colliding Neutron Stars Generate Just Small Amounts of Gold, Creating an Astronomical Mystery
Colliding neutron stars were touted as the main source of some of the heaviest elements in the Periodic Table. Now, not so much … Neutron…
Citizen Scientists Discover Dozens of Failed Stars Lurking in Our Cosmic Neighborhood
Using a NASA-designed software program, members of the public helped identify a cache of brown dwarfs — sometimes called failed stars — lurking in our…
Columns of Matter That Build Up Newborn Stars Directly Observed for the First Time
A team including researchers from the Institute for Astrophysics of the University of Cologne has for the first time directly observed the columns of matter…
Stellar Evolution Code “METISSE” Offers New Insights Into the Lives of Massive Stars
Massive stars are larger than about 10 times the mass of the Sun and are born far less often than their low mass counterparts. However,…