Astronomy News

April 24, 2020

Top Headlines

Hubble Space Telescope (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). | Credit: (c) zenobillis / stock.adobe.com

Exoplanet Apparently Disappears in Latest Hubble Observations

Apr. 20, 2020 What scientists thought was a planet beyond our solar system has 'vanished.' Though this happens to sci-fi worlds, scientists seek a more plausible explanation. One ... read more

View of Milky Way from Earth (stock image). | Credit: (c) narathip12 / stock.adobe.com

Milky Way Could Be Catapulting Stars Into Its Outer Halo

Apr. 19, 2020 Astronomers have shown that clusters of supernovas can cause the birth of scattered, eccentrically orbiting suns in outer stellar halos, upending commonly held notions of how ... read more

Exoplanet illustration (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). | Credit: (c) sdecoret / stock.adobe.com

Earth-Size, Habitable-Zone Planet Found Hidden in Early NASA Kepler Data

Apr. 16, 2020 A reanalysis of data from NASA's Kepler space telescope has revealed an Earth-size exoplanet orbiting in its star's habitable zone, the area around a star where a rocky ... read more

Black hole concept illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) vchalup / stock.adobe.com

ESO Telescope Sees Star Dance Around Supermassive Black Hole, Proves Einstein Right

Apr. 16, 2020 Observations have revealed for the first time that a star orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky ... read more

Latest Headlines

updated 1:49pm EDT

Researchers Use 'Hot Jupiter' Data to Mine Exoplanet Chemistry

Apr. 23, 2020 After spotting a curious pattern in scientific papers -- they described exoplanets as being cooler than expected -- astronomers have improved a mathematical model to accurately gauge the temperatures ... read more

First-Ever Comprehensive Geologic Map of the Moon

Apr. 22, 2020 For the first time, the entire lunar surface has been completely mapped and uniformly classified. The lunar map, called the 'Unified Geologic Map of the Moon,' will serve as the definitive blueprint ... read more

ALMA Reveals Unusual Composition of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov

Apr. 20, 2020 A galactic visitor entered our solar system last year -- interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. When astronomers pointed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) toward the comet on Dec. ... read more

New Clues to Predict the Risks Astronauts Will Face from Space Radiation on Long Missions

Apr. 16, 2020 Researchers used a novel approach to test assumptions in a model used by NASA to predict health risks for ... read more

CHEOPS Space Telescope Ready for Scientific Operation

Apr. 16, 2020 CHEOPS has reached its next milestone: Following extensive tests in Earth's orbit, some of which the mission team was forced to carry out from home due to the coronavirus crisis, the space telescope ... read more

Satellite Galaxies of the Milky Way Help Test Dark Matter Theory

Apr. 15, 2020 Physicists report tiny satellite galaxies of the Milky Way can be used to test fundamental properties of 'dark matter' -- nonluminous material thought to constitute 85% of matter in the ... read more

Why the Solar Wind Is Hotter Than Expected

Apr. 14, 2020 When the sun expels plasma, the solar wind cools as it expands through space -- but not as much as the laws of physics would predict. Physicists now know the ... read more

Cosmic Tempest: Astronomers Detect Most Energetic Outflow from a Distant Quasar

Apr. 14, 2020 Researchers have detected the most energetic wind from any quasar ever measured. This outflow, traveling at nearly 13 percent of the speed of light, ... read more

'Oumuamua illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) dottedyeti / stock.adobe.com

New Formation Theory Explains the Mysterious Interstellar Object 'Oumuamua

Apr. 13, 2020 Since its discovery in 2017, an air of mystery has surrounded the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system, an elongated, cigar-shaped body named 'Oumuamua. ... read more

Piercing the Dark Birthplaces of Massive Stars

Apr. 13, 2020 High-mass stars, which are eight or more times the mass of our Sun, live hard and die young. They often end their short lives in violent explosions called supernovas, but their births are much more ... read more

Earlier Headlines

Nova illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) cameraman / stock.adobe.com

NASA Missions Help Reveal the Power of Shock Waves in a Nova Explosion

Apr. 13, 2020 Unparalleled observations of a nova outburst in 2018 by a trio of satellites, including two NASA missions, have captured the first direct evidence that shock waves powered most of the ... read more

Supernova illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) magann / stock.adobe.com

Scientists Discover Supernova That Outshines All Others

Apr. 13, 2020 A supernova at least twice as bright and energetic, and likely much more massive than any yet recorded has been identified by an international team of ... read more

In a First, NASA Measures Wind Speed on a Brown Dwarf

Apr. 9, 2020 Not quite planets and not quite stars, brown dwarfs are cosmic in-betweeners. Learning about their atmospheres could help us understand giant planets around other ... read more

New Info on Interstellar Magnetic Field in Solar Neighborhood

Apr. 8, 2020 An international research team has mapped the interstellar magnetic field structure and interstellar matter distribution in the solar ... read more

Doubts About Basic Assumption for the Universe

Apr. 8, 2020 No matter where we look, the same rules apply everywhere in space: countless calculations of astrophysics are based on this basic principle. A recent study, however, has thrown this principle into ... read more

First-Ever Photo Proof of Powerful Jet Emerging from Colliding Galaxies

Apr. 7, 2020 Researchers have reported the first detection of a relativistic on-axis jet emerging from two colliding galaxies -- the first photographic proof that merging galaxies can produce jets of fast-moving ... read more

Are Gamma-Ray Bursts Powered by a Star's Collapsing Magnetic Fields?

Apr. 7, 2020 In its final moments of life, a distant massive star releases an intense burst of high-energy gamma radiation - a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB) - the brightest sources of energy in the universe, detectable ... read more

Saturn illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) revers_jr / stock.adobe.com

What Makes Saturn's Atmosphere So Hot

Apr. 6, 2020 New analysis of data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft found that electric currents, triggered by interactions between solar winds and charged particles from Saturn's moons, spark the auroras ... read more

Spiral galaxy illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) Alexandr Mitiuc / stock.adobe.com

The Milky Way's Satellites Help Reveal Link Between Dark Matter Halos and Galaxy Formation

Apr. 6, 2020 Just like we orbit the sun and the moon orbits us, the Milky Way has satellite galaxies with their own satellites. Drawing from data on those galactic neighbors, a new model suggests the Milky Way ... read more

Sulfur 'Spices' Alien Atmospheres

Apr. 6, 2020 They say variety is the spice of life, and now new discoveries suggest that a certain elemental 'variety' -- sulfur -- is indeed a 'spice' that can perhaps point to signs of ... read more

Black hole illustration (stock image). | Credit: (c) hallowedland / stock.adobe.com

Hubble Finds Best Evidence for Elusive Mid-Sized Black Hole

Mar. 31, 2020 Astronomers have found the best evidence for the perpetrator of a cosmic homicide: a black hole of an elusive class known as 'intermediate-mass,' which betrayed its existence by tearing ... read more

Mars (stock image; elements furnished by NASA). | Credit: (c) grejak / stock.adobe.com

A Martian Mash Up: Meteorites Tell Story of Mars' Water History

Mar. 30, 2020 Researchers probed Martian meteorites to reconstruct Mars' chaotic history. Their findings suggest that Mars might not have had a global magma ... read more

ALMA Resolves Gas Impacted by Young Jets from Supermassive Black Hole

Mar. 27, 2020 Astronomers obtained the first resolved image of disturbed gaseous clouds in a galaxy 11 billion light-years away by using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The team found that ... read more

Paired With Super Telescopes, Model Earths Guide Hunt for Life

Mar. 26, 2020 Astronomers have created five models representing key points from our planet's evolution, like chemical snapshots through Earth's own geologic epochs. The models will be spectral templates ... read more

Looking for Dark Matter Close to Home

Mar. 26, 2020 Eighty-five percent of the universe is composed of dark matter, but we don't know what, exactly, it ... read more

Astronomers Use Slime Mould to Map the Universe's Largest Structures

Mar. 26, 2020 The behaviour of one of nature's humblest creatures and archival data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are helping astronomers probe the largest structures in the ... read more

Star Formation Project Maps Nearby Interstellar Clouds

Mar. 23, 2020 Astronomers have captured new, detailed maps of three nearby interstellar gas clouds containing regions of ongoing high-mass star formation. The results of this survey, called the Star Formation ... read more

ALMA radio antennas at night (stock image). | Credit: (c) Christian / stock.adobe.com

The Strange Orbits of 'Tatooine' Planetary Disks

Mar. 19, 2020 Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have found striking orbital geometries in protoplanetary disks around binary stars. While disks orbiting the most compact ... read more

Black Hole Team Discovers Path to Razor-Sharp Black Hole Images

Mar. 18, 2020 A team of researchers have published new calculations that predict a striking and intricate substructure within black hole images from extreme gravitational light ... read more

New Telescope Design Could Capture Distant Celestial Objects With Unprecedented Detail

Mar. 18, 2020 Researchers have designed a new camera that could allow hypertelescopes to image multiple stars at once. The enhanced telescope design holds the potential to obtain extremely high-resolution images ... read more

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