'Closest black hole' system found to contain no black hole

In 2020 a team led by European Southern Observatory (ESO) astronomers reported the closest black hole to Earth, located just 1,000 light-years away in the HR 6819 system. But the results of their study were contested by other ...

Astronomers discover helium-burning white dwarf

A white dwarf star can explode as a supernova when its mass exceeds the limit of about 1.4 solar masses. A team led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Garching and involving the University of ...

Astronomers discover a rare eclipsing X-ray binary

An international team of astronomers reports the detection of a rare eclipsing Be/X-ray binary system as part of the Swift Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) Survey (S-CUBED). The finding was detailed in a research paper published ...

Supernova reveals its secrets to team of astronomers

An international group of astronomers led by Benjamin Thomas of The University of Texas at Austin has used observations from the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) at the university's McDonald Observatory to unlock a puzzling mystery ...

Getting WISE About Nemesis

Is our Sun part of a binary star system? An unseen companion star, nicknamed 'Nemesis,' may be sending comets towards Earth. If Nemesis exists, NASA's new WISE telescope should be able to spot it.

Astronomers propose a new method for detecting black holes

A stellar mass black hole is a compact object with a mass greater than three solar masses. It is so dense and has such a powerful force of attraction that not even light can escape from it. They cannot be observed directly, ...

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