This Famous Star Is a Total Fraud, Astronomers Say
In March 2022, the Hubble Space Telescope peered through the distant cosmos and detected the light of an apparent star located 12.9 billion light-years away. Astronomers named it Earendel, meaning…
Astronomers Capture the Most Colorful Image of a Galaxy Ever
Caldwell 65, better known as the Sculptor galaxy, is bursting with stellar activity and dust-rich features. Located 11 million light-years away—right next door in cosmological terms—it offers a rare glimpse…
These Two Galaxy Clusters Are About to Smash Into Each Other—Again
Roughly 2.8 billion light-years from Earth, two galaxy clusters are engaged in a cosmic tussle. These enormous structures last collided about a billion years ago, but now, it appears they’re…
Wild Theory Suggests Dark Matter Could Make Stars Immortal
Stars very close to the center of our galaxy could be fueled by dark matter in perpetuity, according to a team of astronomers who recently studied the distant light sources.…
Astronomers Witness a Supermassive Black Hole Roaring to Life
Five years ago, a galaxy 300 million light-years away got a lot brighter in telescopes, radiating ultraviolet, optical, and infrared light out into space. This year, the resurgent galaxy started…
Recent Cosmic Collision Shakes Up Milky Way History
Evidence of the Milky Way’s past is encoded in wrinkles of stars, whose positions and movements have shifted as our galaxy has interacted with other galaxies, sometimes violently. Now, a…
Webb Spots Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen—and It’s Weirdly Bright
Researchers recently observed a record-breaking galaxy beaming with young stars, which existed only 290 million years after the universe came into existence, challenging our view of the Cosmic Dawn with…
Spin of Supermassive Black Hole Measured at a Quarter the Speed of Light
An artist’s impression of Gilese 12 b in orbit around its red dwarf host star.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC) A newly discovered exoplanet, with its surface temperature estimated to be remarkably…
Groundbreaking Measurement Reveals a Black Hole Spinning at a Quarter the Speed of Light
A team of astronomers has managed to calculate the speed of a distant supermassive black hole’s spin thanks to the object’s chance meeting with a star—which it promptly destroyed. How…
Some of the Oldest Stars Were Just Found in Our Own Galaxy
Some stars in our very own Milky Way are some of the earliest ever seen, according to research published today in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Is…