stars (Page 2)

Latest in stars

Deep ALMA observations of 12CO emission from fifteen protoplanetary disks reveal a stunning range of structures in the gas morphology including gaps, rings and spirals.

Future planets revealed in unprecedented detail

This is an artist’s impression of the exoplanet 2M1510 (AB) b’s unusual orbit around its host stars, a pair of brown dwarfs. The newly discovered planet has a polar orbit, which is perpendicular to the plane in which the two stars are travelling. Polar planets around single stars had been found before, as well as polar discs of gas and dust capable of forming planets around binary stars. But thanks to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) this is the first time we have strong evidence that such a planet actually exists in a polar orbit around two stars. The two brown dwarfs appear as a single source in the sky, but astronomers know there are two of them because they periodically eclipse each other. Using the UVES spectrograph on the VLT they measured their orbital speed, and noticed that their orbits change over time. After carefully ruling out other explanations, they concluded that the gravitational tug of a planet in a polar orbit was the only way to explain the motion of the brown dwarfs.

Exoplanet with two ‘suns’ is even more unique than Tatooine

An artistic rendering of the newly discovered binary star system in the moment where the first white dwarf has just exploded, hurtling material towards its nearby companion which is on the cusp of explosion too. This event will occur in about 23 billion years, yet in only 4 seconds do both stars explode

Astronomers find spiraling stars heading towards a rare cosmic explosion

By Laura Baisas

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light.

Space Telescope

JWST spots an energetic ‘Cosmic Tornado’ 625 light-years away

drone flying for aerial night photography

Drones can avoid GPS jammers by navigating with the stars

an illustration of an orange dot orbiting a larger orangish body in space

Astronomers discover a new exoplanet orbiting the closest single star to the sun

By Laura Baisas

A purplish spiral galaxy with red and yellow space objects.

JWST takes a jab at the mystery of the universe’s expansion rate

By Briley Lewis

Gold atom with nucleus and floating particles to depict what is matter

Particle Physics

What is matter? It’s not as basic as you’d think.

Iridescent Running Chicken Nebula with glowing gases and stars

31 award-winning astronomy photos: From fiery horizons to whimsical auroras

By Annie Colbert

M101, also known as the Pinwheel galaxy, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

An amateur astronomer spotted a new supernova remarkably close to Earth

A total solar eclipse, a bright ring of sunlight around a dark moon on July 2, 2019.

April’s skies boast the full pink moon, Lyrid meteor shower, and a total solar eclipse

By Laura Baisas

Two people, silhouetted, looking up at a clear night sky.

Catch 5 planets (including Uranus) in an ultra-rare planetary alignment

By Briley Lewis

Milky Way galaxy stars in infrared by NASA Spitzer Space Telescope

Space Telescope

Our universe mastered the art of making galaxies while it was still young

By Briley Lewis

The constellation Orion, centered on the three bright stars of a belt.

Why we turn stars into constellations

By Eva Botkin-Kowacki

a panoramic view of the milky way galaxy

What would happen if the Milky Way died?

By Tatyana Woodall

Canada's CHIME telescope.

Two bizarre stars might have beamed a unique radio signal to Earth

a large sunflower-shaped shade that unfurled from a satellite in space

Exoplanet hunters want to block starlight with a giant orbiting shade

By Tatyana Woodall

Rogue black hole in Milky Way galaxy in an artist's rendition

‘Rogue black holes’ might be neither ‘rogue’ nor ‘black holes’

By Eva Botkin-Kowacki

Venus next to a crescent moon during 2022 planet alignment

Look up at the sky to see a parade of perfectly aligned planets

By Purbita Saha

The Gaia space observatory traveling the Milky Way in an artist's rendition

See the stars from the Milky Way mapped as a dazzling rainbow

By Purbita Saha

Artist’s impression of a micronova (close up)

Astronomers just caught a ‘micronova’—a small but mighty star explosion

The Hubble Space Telescope, which has captured the farthest star yet.

Space Telescope

Hubble spies the most distant star ever found

The star, called 2MASS J17554042+6551277, imaged with a red filter to optimize visual contrast.

Space Telescope

A fully aligned James Webb Space Telescope captures a glorious image of a star

Three galaxies forming a gassy swirl in a Hubble Space Telescope image

Space Telescope

See Hubble’s captures of real-life star wars

By Purbita Saha

Merging white dwarf stars can create a new kind of star.

Rare ‘upside-down stars’ are shrouded in the remains of cannibalized suns

By Leto Sapunar

Ursa Major star shown 18 times in first James Webb Space Telescope composite image

Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope showed us its first star

By Maggie Galloway

Amorphous blob bubble with purple bright clusters near the edges and a bright spot in the middle as a 3D rendering

Astronomers just mapped the ‘bubble’ that envelopes our planet

By Tatyana Woodall

A shooting star in a purple, blue, and yellow night sky over water

Real shooting stars look a lot different than you’d expect

By Idan Ginsburg / The Conversation

The mysterious burst AT2018cow

Astronomers may have an origin story for ‘The Cow,’ a mysteriously powerful cosmic blast

By Leto Sapunar

Scientists just spotted a massive storm from a sun-like star

Scientists just spotted a massive storm from a sun-like star

By Kate Baggaley

A black hole meets a white dwarf star

Watch a black hole devour simulated stars

By Margo Milanowski

Hubble Space Telescope capture of distant galaxies Arp 86 and NGC 7753

Space Telescope

These two galaxies are locked in a cosmic battle

By Margo Milanowski

A newly discovered planet orbiting a dead star offers a glimpse of Earth’s future

A newly discovered planet orbiting a dead star offers a glimpse of Earth’s future

By Leto Sapunar

These strange radio signals might not be coming from stars

By Leto Sapunar

art illustration of the sun

What happens when the sun burns out?

An illustration of a blue, circular star with space matter circling around it in an accretion disk, plus beams of light shooting vertically out of the star.

This could be a brand new type of supernova

By Leto Sapunar

An illustration of a brown dwarf, a celestial body that is not quite planet, not quite star.

These 5 mysterious space objects straddle the line between planets and stars

By Charlie Wood

Flickering light could help astronomers weigh supermassive black holes

Flickering light could help astronomers weigh supermassive black holes

By Charlie Wood

a skyscraper against a green background with rays of light beaming off of it onto the ground

Some skyscrapers are so shiny they turn into death rays

By Popular Science Team

milky-way-from-colorado

This Colorado community fought to save its darkness—and all that relies on it to thrive

By Sarah Scoles

Night sky and stars above the Cherry Springs National Park.

The world needs dark skies more than ever. Here’s why.

Map of 25,000 supermassive black holes

Check out the most extensive map of black holes ever

By Erin Fennessy

Night sky photography

Cold weather is the best time to look at—and photograph—the night sky

By Stan Horaczek

Interacting galaxies seen among stars through a telescope

Behold six galactic collisions, masterfully captured by Hubble

By Jessica Boddy

A reconstruction of the sunspot captured by the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope on January 28th, 2020. The original image was taken in the wavelength of 530 nanometers - in the greenish-yellow part of the visible spectrum–. Researchers modified it to show up red and orange to the naked eye

The best space stories of 2020

By Charlie Wood

The Kepler supernova was spotted in 1604. Four centuries later, material from the explosion is still expanding outward at more than 20 million miles per hour.

Stars are dying all across the galaxy—why don’t we see them?

By Charlie Wood

We still don’t really know what’s inside the sun—but that could change very soon

We still don’t really know what’s inside the sun—but that could change very soon

By Charlie Wood

a panoramic of the milky way

Meet the disk-shaped halo of hot gas you currently live in

By Kate Baggaley

This illustration depicts a star (in the foreground) experiencing spaghettification as it's sucked in by a supermassive black hole (in the background) during a 'tidal disruption event'.

Astronomers caught a black hole slurping up a star like spaghetti

By Paola Rosa-Aquino

the SPHERE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope have imaged GW Orionis, a triple star system with a peculiar inner region. Unlike the flat planet-forming discs we see around many stars, GW Orionis features a warped disc, deformed by the movements of the three stars at its centre.

A strange dusty disk could hide a planet betwixt three stars

By Paola Rosa-Aquino

Artist’s impression of the thin stream of stars torn from the Phoenix globular cluster, wrapping around the Milky Way (left). Astronomers targeted bright red giant stars (artist’s impression, right) to measure the chemical composition of the disrupted Phoenix globular cluster.

A local stellar graveyard could reveal our galaxy’s beginnings

By PopSci Editors

An illustration of a lopsided binary star system.

A lopsided pair of dead stars could reveal some of the universe’s secrets

By Paola Rosa-Aquino

NGC 2275, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope

Space Telescope

Hubble just captured this ‘fluffy’ galaxy in all its flocculent glory

By Candice Wang

An illustration of what an Earthlike exoplanet might look like.

There should be billions of Earths out there. Why can’t we find them?

By Charlie Wood

These anaglyph images can be viewed with red-blue stereo glasses (or 3D glasses) to reveal the stars' distance from their backgrounds. On the left is Proxima Centauri and on the right is Wolf 359.

NASA’s New Horizons is so far away, it’s seeing stars from new angles

By Candice Wang

An artists interpretation of a telescope receiving radio bursts from deep space.

Astronomers spot repeating radio burst patterns from deep space

By Charlie Wood

Particle Physics

Why are big neutron stars like Tootsie Pops?

By Charlie Wood

This image shows the disc around the young AB Aurigae star, where ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) has spotted signs of planet birth.

This ominous image shows the birth of a planet

By Candice Wang

Two starts orbiting a black hole, as portrayed by an illustrator

Astronomers just found the closest black hole to Earth

By Charlie Wood

the sun emitting some solar flares

Scientists say the sun is lazy and boring

By Rachel Feltman

An X-ray and optical composite image of a detonating star.

Ancient supernovas may have pierced moon rocks with star shrapnel

By Charlie Wood

Starlink satellites streak across telescope images of the stars.

Elon Musk insists his satellite swarm won’t interfere with science. This model disagrees.

By Charlie Wood

Artist's interpretation of the teardrop star and its partner.

First of its kind ‘teardrop’ star pulses with its own rhythm

By Charlie Wood

artists impression of a polluted white dwarf star

Asteroids go to pieces when their host star dies

By Charlie Wood