A renegade star exploding in a distant galaxy has forced astronomers to set aside decades of research and focus on a new breed of supernova that can utterly annihilate its parent star — leaving no remnant behind. The signature event, something astronomers had never witnessed before, may represent the way in which the most massive stars in the Universe, including the first stars, die.
Supernovae, neutron star mergers, black holes at the center of galaxies, erupting young stars — these are all examples of objects in the night sky that change their brightness over time. In the coming years, astronomers expect to discover millions of these variable astronomical events with new sensitive telescopes like the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
Gemini Observatory provides critical observations that confirm the distance to a mysterious, very short-lived, radio outburst from a galaxy billions of light years away.
Team of University of La Serena students to recreate the Eddington Experiment that proved Einstein right.
While the National Science Foundation’s Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope will stare at the Sun to detect magnetic fields, it first has to focus on objects far away – other celestial objects visible only in the night sky.
Caught in a cosmic dance, our nearest neighbor galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds, are cartwheeling and circling each other as they fall toward our galaxy, the Milky Way.
Just as high-definition imaging is transforming home entertainment, it is also advancing the way astronomers study the Universe.
The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project re-launches this week, with a call to volunteer citizen scientists to join the search for cold worlds near the Sun.