Search
Stellar Evolution
The Universe is an amazing place. Under the incredible, infrared gaze of JWST, it's coming into focus better than ever before.
Atomic nuclei form in minutes. Atoms form in hundreds of thousands of years. But the "dark ages" rule thereafter, until stars finally form.
Nearly half of all stars are born in binary systems, with the most massive ones dying the fastest. It's not pretty for the "second" star.
The Big Bang theory is not threatened, but astrophysicists have some explaining to do.
In 1667, a core-collapse supernova happened right here in the Milky Way, invisible to all humans. ~350 years later, here's what JWST sees.
When we look at our Sun, its properties are incredibly constant, varying by merely ~0.1% over time. But all stars don't play by those rules.
With JWST, Chandra, and gravitational lensing combined, evidence has emerged for the earliest black hole ever. And wow, is it a surprise!
In 1054, a core-collapse supernova occurred 6500 light-years away. In 2023, JWST imaged the remnant, and might solve a massive mystery.
For the first time, astronomers have created a data-driven estimate for how many black holes are in our Universe: more than anyone expected.
Although we still don't know the question, we know that the answer to life, the Universe, and everything is 42. Here are 5 possibilities.
In the largest star-forming region close to Earth, JWST found hundreds of planetary-mass objects. How do these free-floating planets form?
With so many early galaxies of unexpectedly large brightnesses, JWST surprised us all. Here's how scientists made sense of what we see.
5mins
NASA’s Michelle Thaller explains what happens when the densest stars in the galaxy collide.
The hot Big Bang was an energetic, brilliantly luminous event. Today's Universe is alight with stars. But in between, the dark ages ruled.
How does star-formation, occurring in small regions within galaxies, affect the entire host galaxy that contains it? JWST holds the answers.
In 1987, the closest supernova directly observed in nearly 400 years occurred. Will a pulsar arise from those ashes? JWST offers clues.
With ~400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 6-20 trillion galaxies overall, that makes for a lot of stars. But not as many as you'd think.
The "Ring Nebula," known for almost 250 years, is so much more than a Ring. With JWST's capabilities, we're seeing more than ever before.
Even with the quantum rules governing the Universe, there are limits to what matter can withstand. Beyond that, black holes are unavoidable.
Ultracold gases in the lab could help scientists better understand the universe.
All stars, eventually, run out of fuel and die. Given all the stars we can see and the vast distance to them, are any of them already dead?
The brightest gamma-ray burst ever observed, GRB 221009A behaved in unexpected ways that might help us understand how they occur.
Sun-like stars live for around 10 billion years, but our Universe is only 13.8 billion years old. So what's the maximum lifetime for a star?
With hundreds of billions of stars burning bright, some galaxies are already dead. Their inhabitants might not know it, but we're certain.
When the Universe was first born, the ingredients necessary for life were nowhere to be found. Only our "lucky stars" enabled our existence.
A new, unexpected brightening, just 3 years after a massive dimming event, has astronomers watching Betelgeuse. Is a supernova imminent?
The odds are slim, but the consequences would be literally world-ending. There really is a chance of a black hole devouring the Earth.
The nearby, bright star Fomalhaut had the first optically imaged planetary candidate. Using JWST's eyes, astronomers found so much more.
Many planets will eventually be devoured by their parent star. For the first time, we caught a star in the act, eating its innermost planet!
Finding this missing piece of water’s path through the universe offers clues to how it came to be on Earth.