Astronomy

The star Betelgeuse has dimmed twice in the past year. Now astronomers say they’ve found what may have caused the latest episode – and also discovered that the star is smaller, closer to Earth and further from exploding than previously thought.

New findings from NASA's OSIRIS-REx probe of asteroid Bennu's gravity field suggest that the core is less dense than the outside shell, and possibly contains a large void – which could spell its doom in the not-too-distant future.

Astronomers have witnessed a rare celestial light show – a star being stretched into “spaghetti” by a black hole. More than 200 million light-years from Earth, the dying star was ripped to shreds by immense gravitational forces over six months.

Scientists have estimated the total amount of matter in the universe using a more precise method. By calculating the mass of hundreds of galaxy clusters, the team found that matter makes up around a third of the contents of the universe.

A new “Sonification” project from NASA's Chandra X-ray Center has translated visual data into sound, letting us hear the center of the Milky Way, the supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, and the Pillars of Creation nebula.

NRAO has announced a new addition to NASA’s upcoming moon-shot Artemis program. From the silent skies on the far side of the Moon, the DAPPER spacecraft will listen out for radio signals from the cosmic “Dark Ages,” before the first stars fired up.

Astronomers have discovered a new exoplanet that belongs in a brand new class – an “ultrahot Neptune.” Known as LTT 9779b, the planet orbits extremely close to its star, and raises questions about how such a system came to be.

It’s human nature to be transfixed by clouds, and Jupiter offers some of the best cloud-watching in the solar system. Now, new Hubble images remind us why, revealing fresh storms brewing along with some intriguing changes to old ones.

This selection of winning shots from the 2020 Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest span everything from a gorgeously impressionistic shot of colorful stratospheric clouds, to a surreal snap of a laser homing in on a distant globular cluster.

NASA has discovered a strange star system where a gas giant planet is tightly orbiting a tiny white dwarf. This the first sighting of such an arrangement, raising questions about how the planet survived the star’s expansive death in the first place.

NASA and NOAA have confirmed that the Sun has entered a new solar cycle, with activity beginning to ramp back up from its minimum in December 2019. This next cycle is forecast to be rather quiet, continuing a long-term trend of reduced activity.

While Mars may be the most likely place we might find life beyond Earth, it's not alone. High in the atmosphere of Venus, astronomers have made the startling discovery of a gas called phosphine – a strong contender for a sign of microbial life.