Astronomy
Planetary Systems Can Form in Hellish Surroundings
In the brutal environment of the Orion Nebula, where temperatures soar to 10,000-degrees C (18,000-degrees F), and the stellar winds…
Spitzer View of a Dead Star
In 1572, astronomer Tycho Brahe witnessed the supernova that created the stellar remnant Cassiopeia A. All that remains from this…
The Search for Positronium
If you could look into the sky with gamma ray eyes, you'd see gamma ray bursts, and other sources of…
Afterlife of a Supernova
Stars - like people - are born, grow, mature, and die. But out of stellar death comes new life, as…
Supernova Left No Core Behind
When supernova 1987A blew up in the Large Magellanic Cloud, it was the closest supernova in over 300 years, and…
Recent Blast was Probably a Neutron Star Collision
When astronomers started analyzing the recent gamma ray burst GRB050509b, they knew right away that they were seeing something very…
A Simulation of the Whole Universe
An international team of researchers have developed a computer program that simulates the growth and expansion of the Universe after…
Quasar Image Revises Theories About Their Jets
Researchers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope found something unusual about the jet of…
Measuring the Shape of Stars
The faster a star spins, the more it flattens out, changing from a sphere to something more egg-shaped. Since stars…
Monstrous Stars Spawn a Community of Smaller Stars
A new image taken by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows how a few monstrous stars in a stellar nebula can…