Carolyn Collins Petersen

Carolyn Collins Petersen is a long-time science writer and former astronomy researcher. She writes about astronomy and space exploration and has written 8 books, including the recently released 2nd edition of her Astronomy 101 book, countless articles, more than 60 documentaries for planetarium star theaters, and exhibits for Griffith Observatory, NASA/JPL, the California Academy of Sciences, the Shanghai Astronomical Museum, and the Lowell Observatory Dark Sky Planetarium. She is CEO of Loch Ness Productions. You can email Carolyn here.

Recent Articles

What Could Split a Black Hole in Two?

October 30, 2026

We all know that black holes can collide. It has happened since black holes began to form, early in cosmic time. The result is always a clash that gives off gravitational waves and a giant bang. Since black holes have such strong gravity, it's almost impossible to imagine a way that any force could break one apart. Yet, that's the task that a group of scientists in Europe set for themselves.
It's a Ghost! No, It's a Stellar Crèche!

October 29, 2026

Astronomers using the Chandra X-ray Observatory (CXO), the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) zeroed in on a wispy-looking region of the Carina Nebula and found a ghostly looking cloud seemingly floating in isolation among the other clouds of gas and dust. Just in time for Hallowe'en, although, it turns out that little cloud isn't the soul of departed stars. Instead, it's a region of the nebula has been actively engaged in creating batches of hot, young new stars.
Unveiling Starbirth Mysteries

October 28, 2026

In 1985, the physicist Heinz R. Pagels wrote, "Stars are like animals in the wild. We may see the youung, but never the actual birth, which is a veiled and secret event." In the decades since then, astronomers have drawn closer and closer to figuring out what actually goes in the veiled stellar nurseries throughout the Universe. The tale of starbirth we know today invokes collapse of clouds of gas and dust into prestellar cores, but it still has many unknowns, such as the role of magnetic fields in the clouds where stars are born.
A Student Finds Three Galaxies and Possibly Solves a Mystery

October 09, 2026

It's not too often that a high school student-turned undergraduate gets three galaxies named after him, especially ones that are breaking the rules of star formation. Julian Shapiro, an astrophysics student at the University of California, Berkeley, found strange dwarf galaxies in the vicinity of the large spiral M101 while doing research into their star formation rates as a high school student. They're now known as Shapiro I, II, and III. In the process, he's become an inspiration to other students who might be interested in astrophysical research.
Galaxy Evolution Can be Affected by Black Hole Jets

October 07, 2026

In recent decades, astronomers have found evidence that supermassive black holes can really mess with their galaxies' evolution. They gobble up material intended for star formation, quenching the birth of stars. Conversely, jets streaming away from those hungry monsters can also energize gas-rich regions and enhance the chances of a galaxy birthing batches of stars in those areas.
The Rate of Starbirth is Crashing in the "Modern" Universe

September 29, 2026

The Universe has been making fewer stars lately and astronomers want to know why. The obvious answer is: there hasn't been enough starbirth material. But, is that true? Is some other process at play? An international team led by researcher Hong Guo of the Chinese Academy of Sciences decided to dig into the reasons why it looks like starbirth is falling off.
Supermassive Black Holes May Enhance Star Formation

September 29, 2026

The black holes at the hearts of galaxies get the credit and/or blame for a lot of things in their hosts. For example, they take the blame for gobbling up star-forming material, effectively "quenching" starbirth in some areas of galaxies. On the bright side, it now turns out that some of them may be commonly participating in the births of stars, too.
Diving into an Out-of-sync Galaxy

September 28, 2026

Galaxies are like snowflakes, no two exactly alike, even the spirals. The Hubble Space Telescope did a visual dive into the distant spiral NGC 4693 and found some intriguing hints to its past. For one thing, this member of the Virgo Cluster seems to have a central region that's rotating out of sync with the spiral arms and bulge. Those arms don't seem to connect to the central region, and the bulge itself seems to extend out above the plane of the galaxy.
Mars Has a Warm Region Inside

September 28, 2026

Something deep inside Mars has scientists looking for clues to its internal evolution. A team at the University of Arizona led by Alexander Byrne, used a technique called "tidal tomography" to probe a heat anomaly in the southern hemisphere mantle. It turns out this subsurface region measures about 200 to 400 degrees Celsius warmer than the rest of the mantle. That warm spot may contain information about how Mars has changed over its lifetime.
How the Infant Universe Got Its First Heavy Elements

September 28, 2026

Way back in the earliest epochs of the Universe, the Big Bang was followed by a period called the Cosmic Dark Ages. It was a time when the cosmic soup of primordial particles was so thick that light couldn't propagate. Hence the term "dark"; also, because, even with our best telescopes, we can't see "into" that epoch. Although we don't have a definite "century by century" timeline of activity, that doesn't mean that period of history didn't lead to something interesting.
Strange Galaxies in the Early Universe Were Shaped by Weird Stars

September 24, 2026

Galaxies and their stars in the early Universe look a lot weirder than those we see today, and astronomers want to know why. A team of researchers at the University of Utah decided to survey certain stars in nearby galaxies as analogs of those that existed when the Universe was still in its infancy. The survey, called the "Treasury of Extremely Metal-Poor O Stars (TEMPOS), used the ultraviolet (UV) light streaming from those relatively close-by stars as detected by the Hubble Space Telescope's Cosmic Origins Spectrograph.
A Rare, Distant Clump of Early Galaxies Reveals Ancient Cosmic Secrets

September 22, 2026

The discovery of a very early and rare proto-supercluster of infant galaxies may help give clues to the formation of such clusters and their connection to the Cosmic Web.
Is a Sea Change Coming for New Horizons Heliospheric Science?

September 02, 2026

If you visit the New Horizons mission website frequently, you'll notice that the spacecraft continues to generate excellent science as it plows its way through the Kuiper Belt. It recently woke up from its latest hibernation period in good health and is transmitting data it gathered back to Earth. The spacecraft, in addition to studying the Jupiter system in 2007, the Pluto system in 2015, and the Kuiper Belt Object Arrokoth in early 2019, has been doing some other fascinating solar system science since then thanks to two mission extensions in 2016 and 2023. Now, as a result of budget cuts at NASA, an important part of the NH science mission could end as early as October of this year.
What Can Happen When a Rapidly Spinning Star Meets a Black Hole?

August 31, 2026

Astrophysicists at Syracuse University in New York think they've found a hitherto-hidden explanation for strange activity during so-called repeating partial Tidal Disruption Events (rpTDEs). These are interactions between a supermassive black hole and a star that wanders too close for comfort, but not close enough to get swallowed up.
Gardening the Moon's Cosmic Archives

August 30, 2026

When a meteoroid hits the Moon's surface, it does more than just dig up a little dirt. It actually excavates a little bit of cosmic history that recorded a long-ago supernova explosion. Scientists at the University of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology have come up with a way to decode that history and learn something about such energetic events in the Universe.
A Tool for Measuring the Mass of the Stars, Galaxies, and the Universe Gets a Tweak

August 30, 2026

How do scientists know the mass of the Universe? Measuring it has traditionally relied on knowing how many stars there are in galaxies, as well as clouds of gas and dust, and associated dark matter. Astronomers generally use the mass of the brightest stars to estimate the mass of an entire galaxy. That means the rest of a galaxy's stars and its dark matter are essentially invisible. For decades, astronomers estimated the number of small, unseen stars in clusters and galaxies using a mathematical rule that assumed stars formed in roughly the same mass proportions everywhere in the Universe. That tool is called the initial mass function (IMF). It describes how many stars of each size there are in a given cluster or galaxy. However, there are challenges with the way it's currently applied because of assumptions it contains.
Ancient Dust Grains Hold Magnetic Clues to the Sun's Birth

August 30, 2026

Those little dust grains that fall to Earth during meteor showers or end up as part of larger meteorites found on Earth may hold surprising clues to the formation of the Sun. That's because they record the state of the magnetic field in the protostellar nebula from which Earth (and ultimately the planets) formed.
A Distant Stream of Stars May Offer New Clues to Dark Matter

August 25, 2026

Dark matter continues to challenge astronomers as they work to solve the mystery of this so-far-unseen material that permeates the Universe. It's not that the stuff doesn't exist. It does, but we just can't see it. The only way it can be detected is by its gravitational effects on ordinary matter. A team of researchers led by University of Copenhagen PhD student Julie Kiel Holm has found a stream of stars stretching out more than 3,000 light-years from a globular cluster that appears to have been shaped by dark matter in a distant galaxy.
Pluto Planetary Science is the Gift that Keeps on Giving

August 19, 2026

Something's wetting the surface of dwarf planet Pluto along the northern edge of Sputnik Planitia, and planetary scientists have found a good explanation for it. A recent study of new Horizons images taken during the 2015 flyby revealed evidence that liquid nitrogen is rising up through cracks in Sputnik Planitia. That's the giant heart-shaped glacial basin we see in all the Pluto images taken by the spacecraft.
Solar Magnetic Field Braids May Have a Previously Hidden Cause

August 12, 2026

Scientists using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) in Hawai'i have found a mechanism occurring on the Sun's surface that they think is heating our star's outer atmosphere. The process, called a Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability (KHI), could well be the root cause of a phenomenon called flux braiding that builds up and moves around on the Sun and heats the coronasphere. This discovery may well also explain the fundamental physics of similar activity at other stars.