Most Black Holes Spin Rapidly. This one… Doesn’t
A Chandra X-ray Observatory view of the supermassive black hole at the heart of quasar H1821+643. Courtesy NASA/CXC/Univ. of Cambridge/J.…
Tidal Heating Could Make Exomoons Much More Habitable (and Detectable)
A new study shows how the study of tidal heating in exomoons could greatly expand the search for life in…
Red Supergiant Stars Bubble and Froth so Much That Their Position in the Sky Seems to Dance Around
Making a 3D map of our galaxy would be easier if some stars behaved long enough to get good distances…
This is How You Get Multiple Star Systems
Stars form inside massive clouds of gas and dust called molecular clouds. The Nebular Hypothesis explains how that happens. According…
The Case is Building That Colliding Neutron Stars Create Magnetars
Magnetars are some of the most fascinating astronomical objects. One teaspoon of the stuff they are made out of would…
A Dying Star’s Last Act was to Destroy all Its Planets
When white dwarfs go wild, their planets suffer through the resulting chaos. The evidence shows up later in and around…
The Rings of Uranus and Neptune Could Help map Their Interiors
Mapping the interior of the ice giants is difficult, to say the least. Not only are they far away and…
A New Map of Mars, Made From 51,000 Orbital Images
When NASA sent the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) to the red planet in 2006, the spacecraft took an instrument with…
Cygnus Boosts the International Space Station for the First Time. NASA Can Now Potentially Keep the Station Aloft Without Russia’s Progress Spacecraft
Northrup Grumman’s Cygnus cargo spacecraft conducted a successful reboost of the International Space Station over the past weekend, on Saturday,…
Record ‘Fast Nova’ Flares Over a Single Day
A galactic nova flared briefly into naked eye visibility for a day, before vanishing from sight.