Binary stars as a research area encompass the observational, theoretical, and computational study of gravitationally bound stellar pairs, focusing on their formation, orbital dynamics, mass transfer, and evolutionary pathways. This field investigates how binarity affects stellar structure, nucleosynthesis, angular momentum evolution, and endpoints such as white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole binaries. It also includes characterization of spectroscopic, eclipsing, and astrometric binaries, derivation of fundamental stellar parameters from orbital solutions, and modeling of interaction phenomena such as accretion, common-envelope evolution, and mergers, which are crucial for understanding supernova progenitors, gravitational-wave sources, and the statistical properties of stellar populations.
An international team led by researchers from the University of São Paulo (USP) in Brazil has developed an innovative method to identify stars that have consumed the planets around them. The technique detects variations in ...
Astronomy
18 hours ago
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Active black holes are easy to detect. Their superheated accretion disks emit bright X-rays, and the jets streaming from their poles are easily seen at visible and radio wavelengths. But most stellar-mass black holes are ...
Astronomy
Sep 8, 2026
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Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have captured one of the most detailed three-dimensional views yet of a massive binary star system while it is still being born. By tracking the motions ...
Astronomy
Sep 8, 2026
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Current gravitational-wave observatories aren't sensitive enough to capture the gravitational waves of binary stars. They can only see the gravitational chirps of black holes just as they are merging. But that will change ...
Astronomy
Sep 7, 2026
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Astronomers have detected extreme, never-before-seen behavior from a rare kind of pulsar and stumbled on a surprising link to one of astronomy's biggest current mysteries. Using 174 hours of radio observations, researchers ...
While astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets over the last few decades, the true prize continues to elude them—they have yet to find an Earth-mass, rocky planet orbiting in the habitable zone of a sun-like star. That's ...
Planetary Sciences
Aug 31, 2026
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Astronomers have found a four-star system doing something that has never been confirmed before. The system, TIC 433545934, has two close pairs of stars orbiting each other. While each pair eclipses its own two stars, as usual, ...
At the center of most galaxies lies a supermassive black hole, with a mass millions to billions of times that of our sun and some of the most extreme gravity in the universe.
Astronomy
Aug 21, 2026
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Researchers have helped unravel the mystery of why certain pairs of stars pulse with regular, long-period bursts of radio waves. The particular class of objects observed comes in pairs that always include a compact dead star, ...
Astronomy
Aug 13, 2026
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More than 70% of massive stars are born in close binary systems, where gravitational tugs and mass transfer between companions dramatically alter their evolution. Yet once the interaction ends—whether through mass transfer, ...
Astronomy
Aug 12, 2026
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