Astronomy

Astronomy

An illustration of a black hole surrounded by countless colorful stars in space, with several green lines indicating orbital paths around the black hole.
We know of stellar mass and supermassive black holes, but intermediate mass ones have long proved elusive. Until now.
Voyager 1
On a cosmic scale, our existence seems insignificant and inconsequential. But from another perspective, humans are completely remarkable.
A bright star shining in a dark sky filled with numerous smaller stars. The larger star appears at the center with a noticeable twinkle effect.
The standard picture of our Universe is that it's dominated by dark matter and dark energy. But this alternative is also worth considering.
fireworks
From the explosions themselves to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics.
5000 exoplanets
The structure of our Solar System has been known for centuries. When we finally started finding exoplanets, they surprised everyone.
Einstein with his class of students in 1896
There are many things that separate science from ideology, politics, philosophy, or religion. Follow these 10 commandments to get it right.
The last infant stars are finishing their formation inside these pillars of gas. The evaporation of those columns is almost complete.
A series of sun positions during sunset over a landscape, with trees in the foreground and mountains in the background, creating a pattern of glowing points in the sky.
Sure, there's less daylight during winter than summer, as your hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun. But darkness goes deeper than that.
moon two faces
The near and far sides of the Moon are so different from each other, and no one is sure why. New lunar samples could confirm a wild theory.
A spacecraft hovers near a bright ring of light in space, surrounded by misty rays and a vast, dark background.
This research team is working out how to detect extraterrestrial cells in the liquid water ocean hidden beneath Enceladus’s icy crust.
All telescopes are fundamentally limited in what they can see. JWST reveals more distant galaxies than Hubble, but still can't see them all.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
There was a time where no starlight was visible throughout the entire cosmos. That time was short-lived: shorter than astronomers imagined.
Image of a large industrial machine with a green cylindrical component and a long metal rod inside a red and gray structure.
CERN's NA64 experiment used a high-energy muon beam technique to advance the elusive search for dark matter, offering new hope for solving one of astronomy's greatest mysteries.
The sharpest optical images, for now, come from the Hubble Space Telescope. A ground-based technique can make images over 100 times sharper.
how many planets
From the coldest planets to spacecraft that have exited the Solar System, these little-known facts stump even many professional astronomers.
universe temperature
Although the Big Bang occurred at an instant in time long ago, we still see the light from it. Will the evidence ever disappear completely?
Known as hypervelocity stars, we originally thought just one would be ejected every 100,000 years. The real number is much greater.
A vibrant solar flare erupts from the Sun's surface, showcasing sun activity in 2024 and emitting bright ultraviolet light in this detailed astrophotograph.
Northern lights in the American South, clusters of huge geomagnetic storms—the Sun is throwing a tantrum right on schedule.
A computer-generated image of a bright celestial object with an accretion disk, possibly representing what the sun looked like when it was born.
Newborn stars are surrounded only by a featureless disk. Debris disks persist for hundreds of millions of years. So when do planets form?
An image of a blue and white planet in space with starry background and a bright star on the right.
Out beyond Neptune are some fascinating bodies left over from our Solar System's formation. Could one of them truly be spectacular?
A composite image shows the sun's path in the sky at different times of the year over a grassy landscape, with three arches of sun positions represented by dots, illustrating the earliest solstice.
On June 20, 2024, the summer solstice occurs at its earliest moment since 1796: when George Washington was President of the USA. Here's why.
Two breathtaking pictures of a galaxy and a star taken by the Hubble telescope, highlighting the beauty and cosmic magnitude that fuels the Hubble tension.
There are two different ways to measure the expansion rate of the Universe, and they don't agree. And no, new measurements don't help.
A new all-time record! JWST's discovery of JADES-GS-z14-0 pushes the earliest galaxy ever seen to just 290 million years after the Big Bang.
A deep space image showing numerous galaxies of different shapes and sizes scattered across a dark background, with many stars and cosmic objects, including the ancient Methuselah star, also visible throughout.
The Universe is precisely dated at 13.8 billion years old, but astronomers claim the Methuselah star is 14.5 billion years old. What gives?
A sailboat is silhouetted against a vibrant sunset over a calm sea, with other boats and their reflections visible in the background. The sky and water have a golden hue.
Ancient currents seemed to move in concert with a 2.4 million-year dance between the Red Planet and Earth.
A diagram of the solar system illustrates the heliosphere, detailing the termination shock, heliopause, and bow shock, along with the paths of Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11, Voyager 1, and Voyager 2. This visual representation underscores key aspects of fundamental science in our cosmic neighborhood.
Some think the reason fundamental scientific revolutions are so rare is because of groupthink. It's not; it's hard to mess with success.
A close-up of a metallic conical structure, set against a dark wireframe background. The structure has reflective surfaces and appears to be part of a scientific or industrial apparatus.
Scientists are searching for dark matter particles that are trillions or even quadrillion times lighter than the more traditional searches. 
planetary nebulae infrared spitzer
In ~7 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and die. So will every star, eventually. Here are the different fates they'll encounter.
A dark, rocky planet is shown in space with a bright star in the background, surrounded by numerous smaller stars and cosmic dust clouds.
In 2023, data from the James Webb Space Telescope soured hopes that TRAPPIST-1 c had an atmosphere. That disappointment might have been premature.
A view of Earth from space with a bright sunburst at the planet's edge. Stars and a dark expanse of space serve as the background.
The number of planets that could support life may be far greater than previously thought, a recent discovery suggests.