A pair of stars in our cosmic backyard are on a collision course
A dramatic cosmic event is winding up to occur right in our backyard. Astronomers have spotted a pair of stars bound for collision, located just 150 light-years away. When the…
Webb Telescope Finds What May Be a Glowing Aurora on a Failed Star
The Webb Space Telescope has spotted something weird: a brown dwarf with what appear to be aurorae, what we Earthlings sometimes call the Northern Lights. What makes the observation particularly…
Astronomers Spot a Massive Brown Dwarf Hotter Than the Sun
Astronomers recently spotted one of the most massive brown dwarfs known, an object between 75 and 90 times the mass of Jupiter with a beyond-scalding dayside temperature of 8,000 K…
Hubble measures the mass of a lonely dead star for the first time
In billions of years’ time, after our sun has burned through all of its fuel and puffed up to be a red giant, it will eventually shrink and cool until…
Hubble Space Telescope finds destructive white dwarf ripping apart planetary pieces
The Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered a case of cosmic cannibalism, with a white dwarf consuming rocky and icy material from its surrounding environment.
Hints of a planet in the habitable zone of a dead star
Researchers find indications of a potential exoplanet in a white dwarf’s narrow habitable zone for the first time.
Tiny, fast-spinning white dwarf is the most massive ever discovered
Researchers from the W. M. Keck Observatory have found an unusual white dwarf which is both the smallest and the most massive ever observed.
How the James Webb Space Telescope will look for life around dead stars
When the James Webb telescope launches, it may be able to find indications of life beyond our planet — even on planets orbiting dead stars called white dwarfs.
This planet survived the death of its star — and we don’t know how
This week researchers have uncovered a new astronomical oddity: a planet several times the size of the dead star it orbits.