Astronomy

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.

Perhaps on other planets, diamonds are as common and boring as rocks. Astronomers suggest that some planets might actually be largely made of diamonds, and now a team has calculated how such a planet could form and how it would be structured.

Astronomers have detected the strongest magnetic field ever observed in the universe. Studying X-ray signals from a neutron star, the team calculated that its magnetic field is tens of millions of times stronger than any created in a lab on Earth.

In recent years astronomers made the puzzling discovery of two bizarre galaxies with almost no dark matter, which should dominate them. Now, a new study has suggested an explanation for that mystery – a larger nearby galaxy is stripping it away.