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Exoplanets, planets that orbit stars other than the sun, are found at distances very far from Earth. For example, the closest exoplanet to us, Proxima Centauri b, is 4.2 light years away, or 265,000 times the distance between ...
The forthcoming launch of the James Webb Space Telescope offers unprecedented new opportunities for astronomers. It's also a timely opportunity to reflect on what previous generations of telescopes have shown us.
Using spacecraft and ground-based facilities, Russian astronomers have inspected the Orion Bar photodissociation region, focusing on the mid-infrared emission from this source. Results of the study could help astronomers ...
On October 19, 2017, astronomers made the first-ever detection of an interstellar object (ISO) passing through our solar system. Designated 1I/2017 U1 ′Oumuamua, this object confounded astronomers who could not determine ...
An international team of astronomers has reported the discovery of a structure thought to be a "protocluster" of galaxies on its way to developing into a galaxy supercluster. Located 11 billion light-years from Earth, the ...
Do you see a monster in this picture? Do the bright spots near the top of the image look like the piercing eyes and elongated snout of Godzilla?
White dwarfs are among the most stable of stars. Left on their own, these stars that have exhausted most of their nuclear fuel—while still typically as massive as the Sun—and shrunk to a relatively small size can last ...
Planetary systems take millions of years to form, which introduces quite a challenge for astronomers. How do you identify which stage they are in, or categorize them? The best approach is to look at lots of examples and keep ...
Brown dwarfs aren't quite stars and aren't quite planets, and a new study suggests there might be more of them lurking in our galaxy than scientists previously thought.
For millennia, humanity has observed the changing phases of the Moon. The rise and fall of sunlight reflected off the Moon, as it presents its different faces to us, is known as a "phase curve". Measuring phase curves of ...
