Galaxies hit single, doubles, and triple (growing black holes)

When three galaxies collide, what happens to the huge black holes at the centers of each? A new study using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and several other telescopes reveals new information about how many black holes ...

Coronal holes during the solar maximum

Sunspots were first seen by Galileo, and in the eighteenth century Rudolf Wolf concluded from his study of previous observations that there was a roughly eleven-year solar cycle of activity. In 1919 the astronomer George ...

Chandra observations reveal extraordinary magnetar

In 2020, astronomers added a new member to an exclusive family of exotic objects with the discovery of a magnetar. New observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory help support the idea that it is also a pulsar, meaning ...

The uncertainties in measuring cosmic expansion

Ninety years after Edwin Hubble discovered the systematic motions of galaxies and George Lemaitre explained them as cosmic expansion from a point using Einstein's equations of relativity, observational cosmology today is ...

A Rosetta stone for planet formation

Planets are formed from the disk of gas and dust around a star, but the mechanisms for doing so are imperfectly understood. Gas is the key driver in the dynamical evolution of planets, for example, because it is the dominant ...

Carbon emission from star-forming clouds

The carbon atom can be easily ionized, more easily than hydrogen atoms for example. In star forming regions, where massive young stars emit ultraviolet light capable of ionizing atoms, all the neutral carbon nearby becomes ...

An Earth-like stellar wind for Proxima Centauri c

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, and its planet, Proxima Cen b ("Proxima b"), lies in its habitable zone (the distance range within which surface water can be liquid), making the planet a prime target for ...

Feeding a galaxy's nuclear black hole

A galactic bar is the approximately linear structure of stars and gas that stretches across the inner regions of some galaxies. The bar stretches from one inner spiral arm, across the nuclear region, to an arm on the other ...

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