Stellar Evolution
A Giant Star is Fading Away. But First, it Had an Enormous Eruption
About 16,000 light-years away, a massive star experienced an unusual dimming event. This can happen in binary stars when one…
Three Baby Stars Found at the Heart of the Milky Way
The core of our Milky Way is buzzing with stars. Recently astronomers reported that it contains at least one ancient…
Vampire Stars Get Help from a Third Star to Feed
Some stars are stuck in bad binary relationships. A massive primary star feeds on its smaller companion, sucking gas from…
Can a Dead Star Keep Exploding?
In September 2022, an automated sky survey detected what seemed to be a supernova explosion about one billion light-years away.…
A Star Threw Off a Sun’s Worth of Material. And Then it Exploded!
What happens just before a massive star explodes as a supernova? To figure that out, astronomers need to look at…
When the Sun Dies, it Could Produce a Fantastic Ring in Space, Like This New Image From JWST
We recently got a new image of the famous Ring Nebula from JWST using its NIRCam instrument. This week we…
Is This How You Get Magnetars?
Imagine a living star with a magnetic field at least 100,000 times stronger than Earth's field. That's the strange stellar…
A New Simulation Reveals One Entire Stage of a Star's Life
Stars begin as giant clouds of gas and dust that pull together through mutual gravity into a dense protostar. At…
Yes! A JWST Image of the Ring Nebula
Brace yourselves for great JWST views of the iconic Ring Nebula (M57). An international team of astronomers just released a…
Astronomers are Watching a Planet Get its Atmosphere Blasted Away into Space
What do you get when a hot young world orbits a wildly unstable young red dwarf? For AU Microsopii b,…