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Articles on Astronomy

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The truth is we don’t really know if space goes on forever – but maybe, one day, we will find out. Sweetie187/flickr

Curious Kids: Does space go on forever?

People used to think that when they looked up at the night sky, they were seeing all of space. Then American astronomer Edwin Hubble found out something so amazing, NASA named a telescope after him.
Saturn and its rings backlit by the sun, which is blocked by the planet in this view. Encircling the planet and inner rings is the much more extended E-ring. NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Water, weather, new worlds: Cassini mission revealed Saturn’s secrets

With the probe now on its ‘Grand Finale,’ a Cassini team member describes the amazing discoveries it made about the ringed planet and its many moons.
Astronomers predict the existence of Planet 9 based on data collected in the outer Solar System. from www.shutterstock.com

Stargazing citizens and scientists share the hunger to find Planet 9

To help find Planet 9, you just need a computer and a little astronomy knowledge. Already, 120,000 images have been processed by citizen scientists in just 3 days.
Pluto is a dwarf planet but that doesn’t make it any less worthy of our attention. NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI

Planet or dwarf planet: all worlds are worth investigating

A group of astronomers are trying to reclassify Pluto as full ‘planet’. But there are good reasons to leave our classification system alone, and this doesn’t mean Pluto is any less interesting.
An artist’s concept of what it could look like on the surface of one of the exoplanets of TRAPPIST-1. NASA/JPL-Caltech

Seven Earth-sized planets discovered orbiting a nearby star

Several of the newly-discovered exoplanets orbiting a small star appear to be locked in an intricate dance that hints at how such planetary systems can form.
An artist’s impression of a Sun-like star close to a rapidly spinning supermassive black hole, with a mass of about 100 million times the mass of our Sun. ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser

Black holes are even stranger than you can imagine

The discovery of a new black hole adds to our understanding of these celestial objects that fascinate in both fact and fiction.
Have we really discovered other “Earth-like” planets orbiting around other stars? Understanding what we do and do not know about exoplanets is the key to answering this question. ESO/L. Calcada/N. Risinger/Reuters

Until we get better tools, excited reports of ‘habitable planets’ need to come back down to Earth

Over the last 20 years, advances in the field of exoplanet discovery have excited the imaginations of scientists and enthusiasts alike. But we’re in position to know yet whether a planet is habitable.

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