A Cosmic Chirp Many black holes are found in pairs that orbit each other like ice dancers. Eventually they collide, merge, and coalesce into one giant body. The National Science…
Category: Astronomy
Star swallowing a planet observed for the first time
As a star runs out of fuel, it will billow out to a million times its original size, engulfing any matter — and planets — in its wake. Scientists have…
Hubble Follows Sneaky Shadow Play Around Planet-Forming Disk
The young star TW Hydrae is playing “shadow puppets” around the planet-forming disk with scientists observing it with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In 2017, astronomers reported discovering a shadow sweeping across…
New Study of Uranus’ Large Moons Shows 4 May Hold Water
The new modeling explores how oceans could exist in unlikely places in our solar system, such as distant moons around other planets. Uranus is surrounded by its four major rings…
Mass monster M87 with the cosmic digestive system
New observations of the spectacular M87 galaxy reveal how a powerful jet forms around a monstrous black hole contained inside it. The Giant Galaxy Around the Giant Black Hole: The…
Neutron star’s X-rays reveal the beauty of ‘photon metamorphosis’
A “beautiful effect” predicted by quantum electrodynamics (QED) can explain the puzzling first observations of polarized X-rays emitted by a magnetar – a neutron star featuring a powerful magnetic field,…
Mysterious flashes: Now we have double the number of known ‘repeating fast radio bursts’
Astronomers in the Canadian-led CHIME/FRB Collaboration – including researchers from the University of Toronto – have doubled the number of known repeating sources of mysterious flashes of radio waves, known as…
New map of the universe’s cosmic growth supports Einstein’s theory of gravity
Cosmic growth: unlike ancient philosophers imagining the universe’s origins, modern cosmologists use quantitative tools to gain insights into its evolution and structure. Modern cosmology dates back to the early 20th…
The Cosmochemist’s Guide to the Galaxy
At the end of 2020, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) successfully returned about 5.4 grams of the asteroid Ryugu. NASA’s sister mission, OSIRIS-REx, is currently flying back to Earth with…
The Young Cluster of Galaxies at the Edge of the Universe
An image of many oval and spiral shaped galaxies. Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Takahiro Morishita (IPAC); Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI) Astronomers have looked back in time to the early…
