Astronomy

More Stories in Astronomy

  1. An illustration of a giant orange star eating a much smaller red planet and a giant burst of bright white dust expanding outward from the tiny planet.
    Astronomy

    For the first time, astrophysicists have caught a star eating a planet

    A burst of light and a cloud of dust are signs that a star 12,000 light-years away swallowed a planet up to 10 times the mass of Jupiter.

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  2. The young star cluster NGC 346, shown as wispy clouds of dust and gas amidst a brilliant starry landscape
    Space

    Rocky planets might have been able to form in the early universe

    The James Webb telescope spied planet-building material around young stars in a nearby galaxy whose chemical makeup matches that of the early cosmos.

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  3. An illustration of the Milky Way with two bubbles shown in blue and purple coming from the center of the galaxy.
    Astronomy

    Cosmic antimatter hints at origins of huge bubbles in our galaxy’s center

    An excess of positrons in Earth’s vicinity supports the idea that the Fermi bubbles were burped by the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole long ago.

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  4. An ultraviolet composite image of Saturn. The planet is seen in shades of blue with a white band towards the center at at the top.
    Planetary Science

    Saturn’s icy rings are probably heating its atmosphere, giving it an ultraviolet glow

    Detecting similar emission from a distant world could help astronomers find other planets that boast bright and beautiful rings.

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  5. Two photos of the same black hole in M87 side by side. The image on the left is the original and appears to be a fuzzy black center with a ring of orange around it. The image on the right is similar but clearly a dark circle in the middle with an orange ring around it.
    Astronomy

    The first black hole portrait got sharper thanks to machine learning

    A machine learning technique filled in data gaps in the image of M87’s black hole, resulting in a thinner ring.

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  6. A photo of a dark room with a projector screen showing a film about the origin of a star cluster. The outlines of people and stars are on the screen frozen while stars light up the ceiling.
    Science & Society

    The Smithsonian’s ‘Lights Out’ inspires visitors to save the fading night sky

    The exhibition examines how light pollution harms astronomy, ecosystems and human cultures. But it also offers hope.

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  7. A telescope image of a long stream of cold cosmic gas seen as a blue line coming off a big purple circle on a dark background.
    Astronomy

    A stream of cold gas is unexpectedly feeding the far-off Anthill Galaxy

    The finding suggests that early galaxies might have gained more of their bulk from streams of cold gas instead of in violent galaxy collisions.

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  8. illustration of two merging neutron stars in blue
    Astronomy

    A neutron star collision may have emitted a fast radio burst

    Astronomers spotted both a fast radio burst and gravitational waves from a cosmic smashup in the same part of the sky and at about the same time.

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  9. An illustration of an orange planet with dark orange and red spots scattered across its surface.
    Astronomy

    The biggest planet orbiting TRAPPIST-1 doesn’t appear to have an atmosphere

    TRAPPIST-1b is hotter than astronomers expected, suggesting there’s no atmosphere to transport heat around the planet.

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