An interstellar probe could help scientists answer fundamental questions about how the Sun influences Earth, space and other planets in the solar system.
Massive dying stars emit large amounts of radiation.
NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team via AP
Some ancient texts record what were likely dying stars, faintly visible from Earth. If close enough, these events can disturb telescopes and even damage the ozone layer.
Black holes use gravity to pull matter into them.
NASA/Chandra X-ray Observatory/M.Weiss via AP
People travel hundreds or thousands of miles and spend a fortune to see the night sky in all its splendor. But we are literally blocking out the cosmic beauty above our homes.
Why isn’t there an endless variety of planets in the universe? An astrophysicist explains why planets only come in two flavors.
In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
Planets form from a disc of dust orbiting a star.
Mopic/Shutterstock.com
It is always exciting to discover new planets beyond our Solar System. Now a planetary astrophysicist is using a star’s chemistry to predict which ones are likely to host giant planets.
The good thing about space is that – even though it has lots of dangerous stuff floating in it, and lots of exploding stars – it’s so big and empty that it almost doesn’t matter.
NASA/CXC/U.Texas
We are in the Milky Way. If you travelled on an extremely fast spaceship for more than two million years, you would reach our neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy. All other galaxies are even further away.
Lasers being shone from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile.
These lasers help remove the twinkles in the night sky and help astronomers see stars clearer on Earth than ever before.
F. Kamphues/ESO
Jake Clark, University of Southern Queensland; Belinda Nicholson, University of Southern Queensland; Brad Carter, University of Southern Queensland, and Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland
How exactly do the stars twinkle in the night sky? As it turns out, the answer is full of hot air… and cold air.
Untangling the history of the Milky Way.
ESO/S Brunier
Planetary Astrophysicist, Senior Research Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and Co-Investigator for the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), Arizona State University