By measuring lithium, researchers study star structure

During its nuclear fusion processes, a burning star does not make the element lithium. Rather, over time, stars consume their lithium supply that was originally created during the Big Bang that gave birth to our universe.

A family portrait of galaxies

(Phys.org)—Two very different galaxies feature in this family portrait taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, together forming a peculiar galaxy pair called Arp 116. The image shows the dramatic differences in size, ...

Hubble's close encounter with the Tarantula

(Phys.org) -- Turning its eye to the Tarantula Nebula, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has taken this close-up of the outskirts of the main cloud of the Nebula.

'Ridiculously' dim bevy of stars found beyond Milky Way

(Phys.org) -- A team of American, Canadian and Chilean astronomers have stumbled onto a remarkably faint cluster of stars orbiting the Milky Way that puts out as much light as only 120 modest Sun-like stars. The tiny cluster, ...

A serendipitous gravitational lens

(PhysOrg.com) -- The path traveled by a light beam will bend in the presence of matter. This remarkable prediction, reached by Einstein in his theory of general relativity, was confirmed by observations of the solar eclipse ...

Millisecond pulsar in spin mode

Astronomers have tracked down the first gamma-ray pulsar in a globular cluster of stars. It is around 27,000 light years away and thus also holds the distance record in this class of objects. Moreover, its high luminosity ...

Giant galaxy Messier 87 finally sized up

The new observations reveal that Messier 87's halo of stars has been cut short, with a diameter of about a million light-years, significantly smaller than expected, despite being about three times the extent of the halo ...

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