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.
Finding common table salt — sodium chloride — on the surface of a moon is more than just a scientific curiosity when that moon is Europa, a potential abode of life.
On July 2, 2019 a total solar eclipse will pass over Chile and Argentina, and through a stroke of astronomical luck, the path of totality crosses directly over the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory located in the foothills of the Andes, 7,241 feet (2200 meters) above sea level in the Coquimbo Region of northern Chile. Five science teams chosen by NSF’s National Solar Observatory will perform experiments at Cerro Tololo during the eclipse; four of them will have their equipment trained on the Sun’s elusive corona and one will study eclipse effects on the Earth itself.
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.
Astronomers once thought asteroids were boring, wayward space rocks that simply orbit around the Sun. These objects were dramatically presented only in science fiction movies.
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.
After several years of analysis, a team of planetary scientists using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has at last come up with an explanation for a mysterious moon around Neptune that they discovered with Hubble in 2013.