Universe Today
NOIRLab Launches Collection of Hi-Res Images of 88 IAU-recognized Constellations
Saturn's Rings Might Be Really Old After All
Covering an Asteroid With Balls Could Characterize Its Interior
New Image Revealed by NASA of their New Martian Helicopter.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe Makes its Record-Breaking Closest Approach to the Sun
Meteor Showers May One Day Help Protect Humanity!
NASA is Considering Designs and Simulations to Prepare Astronauts for Lighting Conditions Around the Lunar South Pole
Neutron Stars With Less Mass Than A White Dwarf Might Exist, and LIGO and Virgo Could Find Them
Theoretically a neutron star could have less mass than a white dwarf. If these light neutron stars exist, we might detect them through the gravitational waves they emit during a cataclysmic merger with another star.
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Webb Observes Protoplanetary Disks that Contradict Models of Planet Formation
James Webb's Big Year for Cosmology
A Mission to Dive Titan's Lakes - and Soar Between Them
Top Astronomy Events for 2025
Is the Universe a Fractal?
How Did Black Holes Grow So Quickly? The Jets
A current mystery in astronomy is how supermassive black holes gained so much heft so early in the Universe. Black holes have been seen in the first billion years after the Big Bang with hundreds of millions of solar masses, defying current models of their growth. Now, astronomers have a clue. They observed a bright jet coming from a type of supermassive black hole called a blazar, which interacts with surrounding gas, helping to drive it into the maw of the black hole.
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Quantum Correlations Could Solve the Black Hole Information Paradox
M87 Releases a Rare and Powerful Outburts of Gamma-ray Radiation
Astronomers Find a Black Hole Tipped Over on its Side
NASA is Developing Solutions for Lunar Housekeeping's Biggest Problem: Dust!
Where's the Most Promising Place to Find Martian Life?
Can Entangled Particles Communicate Faster than Light?
IceCube Just Spent 10 Years Searching for Dark Matter
Star Devouring Black Hole Spotted by Astronomers
What Makes Brown Dwarfs So Weird?
Archaeology On Mars: Preserving Artifacts of Our Expansion Into the Solar System
Building the Black Hole Family Tree
Many of the black holes astronomers observe are the result of mergers from less massive black holes. Using gravitational waves, we can observe two black holes coming together and their combined remnant. But can astronomers observe a black hole and work out the masses of the objects that came together? Can we build a black hole's family tree? In a new paper, researchers propose that the nearby environment puts limits on the kinds of black holes that can merge.
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Need to Accurately Measure Time in Space? Use a COMPASSO
A Binary Star Found Surprisingly Close to the Milky Way's Supermassive Black Hole
Astronomers have already discovered many stars orbiting the supermassive black hole at the heart of the Milky Way, Sgr A*. Now, researchers have announced they've found a binary star system in the vicinity too. This is surprising since Sgr A* tears at nearby stars with its ferocious tidal forces, and you'd expect binary stars to be separated from one another after too many close flybys. Well, there they are, still a pair after millions of years.
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New Research Suggests Io Doesn't Have a Shallow Ocean of Magma
The Mysterious Case of the Resurrected Star
The JWST Looked Over the Hubble's Shoulder and Confirmed that the Universe is Expanding Faster
Astronaut Don Pettit is Serious, He Rigged up Astrophotography Gear on the ISS
Don Pettit is one of the astronauts currently on board the International Space Station. He's also a serious shutterbug and amateur astronomer. To take advantage of his current lofty perspective, he rigged up a special star tracking mount that he could use to take long-exposure astrophotos from the ISS. The homemade orbital sidereal tracker rotates at a 90-minute period to match the pitch rate of the ISS, allowing him to take 30-second exposures.
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Drone Test Flights Are Being Tested for Flights on Alien Worlds
One of the Most Interesting Exoplanets Just Got Even More Interesting!
Zwicky Classifies More Than 10,000 Exploding Stars
What is the Zoo Hypothesis?
A New Study Suggests How we Could Find Advanced Civilizations that Ran Out of Fusion Fuel
We Might Finally Know How Galaxies Grow So Large
Building Concrete on Mars From Local Materials
New Research Indicates the Sun may be More Prone to Flares Than we Thought
NASA's Perseverance Rover Reaches the Top Rim of the Jezero Crater
Antimatter Propulsion Is Still Far Away, But It Could Change Everything
Could Planets Orbiting Two Stars Have Moons?
Webb Weighs an Early Twin of the Milky Way
Astronomers have used JWST to weigh a galaxy in the early Universe, finding that it has roughly the same mass as the Milky Way should have had at the same time in the Universe's history. The galaxy was seen in a gravitational lens and contains a collection of star clusters, so astronomers have nicknamed it the "Firefly Sparkle Galaxy." The galaxy also contains companion dwarf galaxies, similar to the Milky Way's Magellanic Clouds, which probably merged with it.
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Do the Fastest Spinning Pulsars Contain Quark Matter?
When a massive star dies as a supernova, it can leave behind a pulsar, a rapidly spinning neutron star. The fastest pulsars can spin upwards of 700 times a second, blasting out regular pulses of energy. In a new paper, researchers propose that the fastest-spinning pulsars could contain quark matter in their cores. This would be even denser matter than neutrons and help explain how surprisingly massive neutron stars can spin so rapidly, maybe reaching 1,000 Hz.
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Another Clue About the Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays: Magnetic Turbulence
NASA Thinks it Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed on Mars
New Research may Explain how Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe Grew so Fast
Early Earth's Oceans of Magma Accelerated the Moon's Departure
When the Earth was struck by a Mars-sized planet in its early history, it ejected a debris cloud that led to the formation of the Moon. In the beginning, the Moon was extremely close to the Earth, but then conservation of angular momentum led to the Moon drifting away from the Earth - it's still doing it today. Because the Earth was covered in oceans of magma, researchers think the Moon moved quickly away from the Earth, getting to 25 Earth radii within 100,000 years.
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Could the ESA's PLATO Mission Find Earth 2.0?
Zap! A Black Hole Scores a Direct Hit With its Jet
