Gaia

It looks like a Jackson Pollock painting, but this colorful mess is a new map of the Milky Way, showing strange star structures.

Just how common are potentially habitable Earth-like planets? Researchers on a new study claim to have come up with the most accurate estimate yet – and they’re more common than you might think.

Last year astronomers discovered a gigantic “ghost” galaxy, named Antlia 2, orbiting the Milky Way. Now, new research led by Rochester University has found that the bizarre galaxy may have been involved in a hit-and-run that left the Milky Way with a wobbly galactic disc.

Scientists have been poring over the Gaia galactic census of Milky Way stars for about a year. Now, a team of researchers has found evidence of a “stellar baby boom,” a short period of time in which more than half the stars in the thin disc were born.

A team of astronomers has managed to find the origin of an enormous star that is currently barreling out of the Milky Way having escaped from one of our galaxy’s spiral arms. The discovery challenges the theory that such stars come from the galactic center.

How heavy is the Milky Way galaxy? A team of astronomers has used data from Hubble and the Gaia satellite to make the most accurate measurement of the mass of the galaxy by studying the motions of star clusters orbiting the Milky Way.

An international team of astronomers has uncovered the first direct evidence for the theory that the dying husks of ancient stars, known as white dwarfs, solidify into crystals as they age.

Our Sun may live a pretty lonesome life nowadays, but when it was born it was the middle child in a family of thousands. Now astronomers in Portugal have found not just a solar sibling but a “twin,” more or less identical to the Sun, meaning it’s a great place to look for extraterrestrial life.

Astronomers have spotted a mysterious “ghost” galaxy orbiting the Milky Way. Huge but extremely faint, the oddball galaxy has been named Antlia 2, and it might just be weird enough to force us to rethink what we know about galactic physics and dark matter.

Astronomers have discovered a population of incredibly fast-moving stars bearing down on the Milky Way. It is possible that these newly found "hypervelocity" stellar bodies were created in another galaxy, before being hurled out into intergalactic space on a collision course with the Milky Way.

A team of scientists have identified four stars, one of which could be the home of 'Oumuamua, the first interstellar object known to visit the solar system. Based on data from ESA's Gaia stellar surveyor satellite, the four stars match the back-projected trajectory of 'Oumuamua.

Watery planets beyond the Solar System may be more common than previously thought, making up 35 percent of exoplanets two to four times the size of the Earth. According to a new study, many planets are made up of half water by mass as opposed to the 0.02 percent water that the Earth has.