Related topics: stars · galaxies · neutron stars · black holes · star formation

Astronomers witness a dying star reach its explosive end

For the very first time, astronomers have imaged in real time the dramatic end to a red supergiant's life, watching the massive star's rapid self-destruction and final death throes before it collapsed into a Type II supernova.

Hunting for dead stars

Neutron stars are tiny in size, but almost incomprehensibly dense. Actually, they are stellar corpses, but they still have enough life in them to show some of the most exciting phenomena you can find in space.

Image: Nebula churns out massive stars in new Hubble image

Stars are born from turbulent clouds of gas and dust that collapse under their own gravitational attraction. As the cloud collapses, a dense, hot core forms and begins gathering dust and gas, creating a protostar. This star-forming ...

Image: Hubble surveys a snowman sculpted from gas and dust

The Snowman Nebula is an emission nebula that resides in the constellation Puppis in the southern sky, about 6,000 light-years away from Earth. Emission nebulae are diffuse clouds of gas that have become so charged by the ...

Lack of massive black holes in telescope data is caused by bias

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 ...

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