Astronomy News

September 29, 2016

First-Ever Ultraviolet Observations of a Comet

Crust of Mars Contributes to Atmosphere

Spiral Arms in Protoplanetary Disk

Rosetta May Be Crashing, but Its Legacy Lives On

Latest Headlines

updated 9:41pm EDT

ALMA Catches Stellar Cocoon With Curious Chemistry: First of Its Kind to Be Found Outside the Milky Way

Sep. 29, 2016 — A hot and dense mass of complex molecules, cocooning a newborn star, has been discovered astronomers using ALMA. This unique ... read more

Australian Technology Installed on World’s Largest Single-Dish Radio Telescope

Sep. 26, 2016 — The world’s largest filled single-dish radio telescope has launched, and it relies on a piece of West Australian ... read more

Hubble Spots Possible Water Plumes Erupting on Jupiter's Moon Europa

Sep. 26, 2016 — Astronomers have imaged what may be water vapor plumes erupting off the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa. This finding bolsters other Hubble observations suggesting the icy ... read more

New Low-Mass Objects Could Help Refine Planetary Evolution

Sep. 26, 2016 — When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust, from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because ... read more

X-Rays That Don't Come from Any Known Source

Sep. 26, 2016 — Space is filled with types of light we can't see -- from infrared signals released by hot stars and galaxies, to the cosmic microwave background. Some of this invisible light ... read more

How to Merge Two Black Holes in a Simple Way

Sep. 26, 2016 — The merger of two black holes, such as the one that produced the gravitational waves discovered by the LIGO Observatory, is considered an extremely complex process that can ... read more

Colorful Demise of a Sun-Like Star

Sep. 23, 2016 — Our sun will eventually burn out and shroud itself with stellar debris, but not for another 5 ... read more

ALMA Explores the Hubble Ultra Deep Field: Deepest Ever Millimeter Observations of Early Universe

Sep. 22, 2016 — International teams of astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to explore the distant ... read more

Hubble Finds Planet Orbiting Pair of Stars

Sep. 22, 2016 — Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and a trick of nature, have confirmed the existence of a planet orbiting two stars in the system OGLE-2007-BLG-349, located ... read more

Twin Jets Pinpoint the Heart of an Active Galaxy

Sep. 21, 2016 — Two particle jets shoot out from the heart of active galaxy NGC 1052 at the speed of light, apparently originating in the vicinity of a massive black hole. Researchers have ... read more

Elon Musk Unveils Plan for Mars 'city'

Elon Musk Presents Transportation Plans For Colonizing Mars

With Evidence This Close, NASA Has To Warn It Hasn't Found Aliens

How Will Mars Crews Cope With Watching Earth Fade Into The Distance?

NASA Scientists Find 'Impossible' Cloud on Titan -- Again

Sep. 21, 2016 — The puzzling appearance of an ice cloud seemingly out of thin air has prompted NASA scientists to suggest that a different process than previously thought -- possibly similar to one seen over ... read more

In Exploring the ‘now,’ New Theory Links Flow of Time With Big Bang

Sep. 21, 2016 — A simple question from his wife -- Does physics really allow people to travel back in time? -- propelled a physicist on a quest to resolve a fundamental problem that had puzzled him throughout his ... read more

Feeding a Mars Mission: The Challenges of Growing Plants in Space

Sep. 21, 2016 — Plants will play a critical role in the survival of human beings on long-duration space missions, such as a mission to Mars. However, as a new paper shows, many challenges need to be addressed if ... read more

Galactic Fireworks Illuminate Monster Hydrogen Blob in Space

Sep. 21, 2016 — An international team of researchers using ALMA and other telescopes has discovered the power source illuminating a so-called Lyman-alpha Blob -- a rare, brightly glowing, and enormous concentration ... read more

In Rotating Galaxies, Distribution of Normal Matter Precisely Determines Gravitational Acceleration

Sep. 21, 2016 — Researchers have found a significant new relationship in spiral and irregular galaxies: the acceleration observed in rotation curves tightly correlates with the gravitational acceleration expected ... read more

New Ways to Track Stars Eaten by Black Holes

Sep. 19, 2016 — Astrophysicists have broken new ground in ways to observe a star swallowed by a black hole, promising to help paint a clearer picture of this cosmic ... read more

Unusual Short Burst of X-Rays Coming from Slowest-Spinning Neutron Star

Sep. 19, 2016 — A new record-holder for the slowest spinning neutron star has been found thanks to clues first detected by NASA's Swift space observatory. Spinning neutron stars are the class of stars with the ... read more

Cassini Begins Epic Final Year at Saturn

Sep. 15, 2016 — After more than 12 years studying Saturn, its rings and moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has entered the final year of its epic voyage. The conclusion of the historic scientific odyssey is ... read more

Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars Discovered

Sep. 15, 2016 — A black hole destroying a star, an event astronomers call 'stellar tidal disruption,' releases an enormous amount of energy, brightening the surroundings in an event called a flare. Two new ... read more

Some Ancient Mars Lakes Formed Long After Others

Sep. 15, 2016 — Lakes and snowmelt-fed streams on Mars formed much later than previously thought possible, according to new findings. The recently discovered lakes and streams appeared roughly a billion years after ... read more

Gaia’s Billion Star Maps Hints at Treasures to Come

Sep. 15, 2016 — The first catalog of more than a billion stars from ESA's Gaia satellite was just published -- the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to ... read more

Astronomers Capture Best View Ever of Disintegrating Comet

Sep. 15, 2016 — Astronomers have captured the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart 67 million miles from Earth, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The images suggest that the roughly ... read more

Exploration Team Shoots for the Moon With Water-Propelled Satellite

Sep. 15, 2016 — Cislunar Explorers, a team of Cornell University students guided by Mason Peck, a former senior official at NASA and associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, is attempting to ... read more

Black Hole Hidden Within Its Own Exhaust

Sep. 15, 2016 — New data from ALMA reveal that the black hole at the center of a galaxy named NGC 1068 is actually the source of its own dusty torus of dust and gas, forged from material flung out of the black ... read more

Starving Black Hole Returns Brilliant Galaxy to the Shadows

Sep. 15, 2016 — Many galaxies are found to have an extremely bright core powered by a supermassive black hole. These cores make "active galaxies" some of the brightest objects in the Universe. They are ... read more

X-Ray Detection Sheds New Light on Pluto

Sep. 14, 2016 — Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have made the first detections of X-rays from Pluto. These observations offer new insight into the space environment surrounding the largest and ... read more

Pluto 'Paints' Its Largest Moon Red

Sep. 14, 2016 — In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA's approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto's largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two ... read more

Astronomers Shed Light on Different Galaxy Types

Sep. 14, 2016 — Scientists have taken a critical step towards understanding why different types of galaxies exist throughout the Universe. The research, made possible by cutting-edge instrumentation, means that ... read more

Astronomers Observe Star Reborn in a Flash

Sep. 13, 2016 — Astronomers using Hubble have been able to study stellar evolution in real time. Over a period of 30 years dramatic increases in the temperature of the star SAO 244567 have been observed. Now the ... read more