Astronomy
WFIRST Will be Named After Nancy Grace Roman, NASA’s First Chief Astronomer
In honor of NASA's first Chief Astronomer and the "mother of Hubble," the WFIRST has been officially named the Nancy…
Magnetic north is migrating towards Siberia. Here’s why
The North Pole ain't what it used to be. Well, the geographic North Pole stays fixed over time (mostly because…
Astronomers Are Sure These Are Two Newborn Planets Orbiting a Distant Star
Planet formation is a notoriously difficult thing to observe. Nascent planets are ensconced inside dusty wombs that resist our best…
Jupiter is so Big that our Solar System almost had two Suns
About half of all the star systems in the galaxy are made of pairs or triplets of stars. Our solar…
Venus Meets Mercury This Weekend in a Fine Dusk Conjunction
What’s that? You say you’ve never seen elusive Mercury for yourself? You won’t have an excuse after this weekend, when…
TESS is Also Helping Astronomers Study Bizarre Pulsating Stars
NASA's TESS, or Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite has one main job: finding exoplanets. But it's also helping astronomers study a…
Take a Peek Inside a Giant Star Right Before it Dies
The biggest stars in our universe are some of the most fascinatingly complex objects to inhabit the cosmos. Indeed,giant stars…
Was Betelgeuse Formed by Merging Stars?
Modern humans—or Homo Sapiens—have only been around for about 250,000 years. That's only the blink of an eye in cosmological…
High Energy Neutrinos Are Coming From Supermassive Black Holes
Some neutrinos are so energetic we don't know how they are produced. But a clue lies in the heart of…
Astronomers Continue to Analyze Pluto’s Atmosphere
When NASA's New Horizons spacecraft flew past Pluto, studying the atmosphere was a key scientific objective. Most of what we…