This black widow star devours its rapidly circling companion
In black widow star systems, a rapidly spinning dead star, called a pulsar, blasts its orbiting companion with radiation, slowly evaporating it.
Like their namesake...
Gravity telescope could image exoplanets, shows Stanford study
In the time since the first exoplanet was discovered in 1992, astronomers have detected more than 5,000 planets orbiting other stars.
But when astronomers detect...
Spinning stars shed new light on strange galactic signal
Scientists have found an alternative explanation for a mysterious gamma-ray signal coming from the center of the galaxy, which was long claimed as a...
Scientists find the ancestor of a supermassive black hole
Scientists identified a distant object with properties that lie between those of a galaxy and those of a so-called quasar.
The object was born relatively...
Pluto’s orbit is surprisingly unstable, shows study
In 1930, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the fabled "Ninth Planet" (or "Planet X") while working at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona.
The existence of...
Scientists find a new kind of stellar explosion called micronova
Astronomers, with the help of the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), have observed a new type of stellar explosion — a...
An ancestor of supermassive black holes, found at cosmic dawn
At the center of the more-massive galaxies in the Universe lie the intensely powerful and energetic phenomena known as supermassive black holes (SMBHs).
This includes...
Astronomers find rare slimmer red giant stars for the first time
A new, slimmer type of red giant star has been identified by astronomers, who liken their discovery to 'finding Wally'. Only around 40 of...
Astronomers detect extreme weather on ultra-hot Jupiters
In studying a unique class of ultra-hot exoplanets, NASA Hubble Space Telescope astronomers may be in the mood for dancing to the Calypso party...
NASA’s Hubble finds a planet forming in an unconventional way
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has directly photographed evidence of a Jupiter-like protoplanet forming through what researchers describe as an "intense and violent process."
This discovery...