Major smashups between rocky bodies shaped our solar system. Observations of a similar crash give clues about how frequent these events are around other stars.
Astronomy
Mar 18, 2022
0
410
Set to launch on Dec. 22, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is the largest space observatory in history, and it has an equally gargantuan task: to collect infrared light from the distant corners of the cosmos, enabling scientists ...
Astronomy
Dec 14, 2021
0
3198
Very distant, active supermassive black holes are the brightest beacons in the universe. Known as quasars, these behemoths are surrounded by equally distant galaxies. In recent decades, researchers have gone on a cosmic treasure ...
Astronomy
Dec 9, 2021
0
281
Our telescopes have never detected a black hole more massive than 20 times the mass of the sun. Nevertheless, we now know of their existence as dozens of those black holes have recently been "heard" to merge via gravitational ...
Astronomy
Nov 9, 2021
6
1285
An international team of astronomers led by scientists from Leiden University has for the first time characterized a dust disk surrounding a young super-Jupiter, which is either a giant planet or brown dwarf. They used so-called ...
Astronomy
Oct 13, 2021
0
38
White dwarfs are among the most stable of stars. Left on their own, these stars that have exhausted most of their nuclear fuel—while still typically as massive as the Sun—and shrunk to a relatively small size can last ...
Astronomy
Oct 12, 2021
0
59
A recent article published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, led by Dr. Kostas Kouroumpatzakis, of the Institute of Astrophysics at the Foundation for Research and Technology, Hellas (IA-FORTH), and ...
Astronomy
Jun 23, 2021
1
336
A serendipitous discovery by citizen scientists has provided a unique new window into the diverse environments that produce stars and star clusters, revealing the presence of "stellar nurseries" before infant stars emerge ...
Astronomy
Apr 13, 2021
3
101
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 ...
Astronomy
Jan 8, 2021
6
546
Quasars are the brightest objects in the universe and among the most energetic. They outshine entire galaxies of billions of stars. A supermassive black hole lies at the heart of every quasar, but not every black hole is ...
Astronomy
Oct 14, 2020
8
565
