Stars with the mass of the sun or larger are typically accompanied by one or more orbiting companion stars. The system forms when gravity contracts the gas and dust of an interstellar cloud until clumps develop that are dense ...
Astronomy
Jul 1, 2022
0
173
Nearby black holes and their stellar companions form an astrophysical rogues' gallery in this new NASA visualization.
Astronomy
May 3, 2022
0
347
In some of the most crowded parts of the universe, black holes may be tearing apart thousands of stars and using their remains to pack on weight. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, could help answer ...
Astronomy
Apr 20, 2022
2
259
Submillimeter galaxies (SMGs) are a class of the most luminous, distant, and rapidly star-forming galaxies known and can shine brighter than a trillion Suns (about one hundred times more luminous in total than the Milky Way). ...
Astronomy
Jun 25, 2021
17
436
Using data for more than 500 young stars observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA), scientists have uncovered a direct link between protoplanetary disk structures—the planet-forming disks that ...
Astronomy
Jun 23, 2021
1
130
On Sept. 9, 2018, astronomers spotted a flash from a galaxy 860 million light years away. The source was a supermassive black hole about 50 million times the mass of the sun. Normally quiet, the gravitational giant suddenly ...
Astronomy
May 17, 2021
3
977
General relativity, Einstein's theory of gravity, is best tested at its most extreme—close to the event horizon of a black hole. This regime is accessible through observations of shadows of supermassive black holes and ...
General Physics
Apr 20, 2021
1
1328
Globular clusters are extremely dense stellar systems, in which stars are packed closely together. They are also typically very old—the globular cluster that is the focus of this study, NGC 6397, is almost as old as the ...
Astronomy
Feb 11, 2021
2
775
When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova—a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned ...
General Physics
Sep 30, 2020
20
3327
About 7.5 billion years from now, our sun will have converted most of its hydrogen fuel into helium through fusion, and then burned most of that helium into carbon and oxygen. It will have swollen to a size large enough to ...
Astronomy
Sep 18, 2020
0
80
