metallicity
Up to a Third of Stars Ate Some of their Planets
In recent years, astronomers have developed techniques to measure the metal content of stars with extreme accuracy. With that capability,…
Webb Reveals a Steam World Planet Orbiting a Red Dwarf
The JWST has found an exoplanet unlike any other. This unique world has an atmosphere almost entirely composed of water…
A Star Was Kicked Out of a Globular Cluster by an Intermediate-Mass Black Hole
Astronomers have solid evidence for the existence of stellar-mass black holes and supermassive black holes. However, evidence for Intermediate Black…
Binary Stars Form in the Same Nebula But Aren’t Identical. Now We Know Why.
It stands to reason that stars formed from the same cloud of material will have the same metallicity. That fact…
Astronomers Think They’ve Found Examples of the First Stars in the Universe
When the first stars in the Universe formed, the only material available was primordial hydrogen and helium from the Big…
The Milky Way’s Most Massive Stellar Black Hole is Only 2,000 Light Years Away
Astronomers have found the largest stellar mass black hole in the Milky Way so far. At 33 solar masses, it…
The Brightest Gamma Ray Burst Ever Seen Came from a Collapsing Star
After a journey lasting about two billion years, photons from an extremely energetic gamma-ray burst (GRB) struck the sensors on…
The Large Magellanic Cloud isn’t Very Metal
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is the Milky Way's most massive satellite galaxy. Because it's so easily observed, astronomers have…
One in Twelve Stars Ate a Planet
That stars can eat planets is axiomatic. If a small enough planet gets too close to a large enough star,…
This Globular Cluster is Plunging Toward the Milky Way’s Centre
Globular clusters (GCs) are spherical groups of stars held together by mutual gravity. Large ones can have millions of stars,…