Near-sun comet roasted to death

Astronomers using a fleet of world leading telescopes on the ground and in space have captured images of a periodic rocky near-sun comet breaking apart. This is the first time such a comet has been caught in the act of disintegrating ...

Caught speeding: Clocking the fastest-spinning brown dwarfs

Using data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, scientists have identified the three fastest-spinning brown dwarfs ever found. More massive than most planets but not quite heavy enough to ignite like stars, brown dwarfs are ...

Gemini gets lucky and takes a deep dive into Jupiter's clouds

Researchers using a technique known as "lucky imaging" with the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Maunakea have collected some of the highest resolution images of Jupiter ever obtained from the ground. These images are part ...

Total annihilation for supermassive stars

A renegade star exploding in a distant galaxy has forced astronomers to set aside decades of research and focus on a new breed of supernova that can utterly annihilate its parent star—leaving no remnant behind. The signature ...

Ultra-sharp images make old stars look absolutely marvelous

Using high-resolution adaptive optics imaging from the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have uncovered one of the oldest star clusters in the Milky Way Galaxy. The remarkably sharp image looks back into the early history of ...

What do Uranus's cloud tops have in common with rotten eggs?

Hydrogen sulfide, the gas that gives rotten eggs their distinctive odor, permeates the upper atmosphere of the planet Uranus - as has been long debated, but never definitively proven. Based on sensitive spectroscopic observations ...

The most ancient spiral galaxy confirmed

The most ancient spiral galaxy discovered to date is revealing its secrets to a team of astronomers at Swinburne University of Technology and The Australian National University (ANU), part of the Australian Research Council ...

page 3 from 6