Galaxy
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A supermassive monster lurks at the center of our galaxy, and astronomers have now discovered that it’s spinning so fast it’s warping the very fabric of spacetime into a football shape.
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Astronomers have mapped out half the universe in X-ray light, using a space telescope called eROSITA. The new map, which contains almost a million X-ray sources, is the basis of dozens of new scientific papers, with many more to come.
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Astronomers have discovered the most distant – and therefore earliest – known black hole. Hiding in a galaxy called GN-z11, this black hole is bigger than should be possible given the age of the universe.
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Astronomers have discovered a colossal cosmic structure that’s so big it threatens our entire understanding of the universe. The Big Ring spans about 3% of the radius of the observable universe – and it might be part of an ever bigger structure.
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It’s not often that space throws something entirely new at you, but in 2019 astronomers discovered a completely unknown phenomenon they called odd radio circles (ORCs). Now, more data may have revealed just how these rare objects form.
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Space is one of the most versatile and photogenic subjects, and this year was no different. From a sunrise captured by the International Space Station to the most distant star ever observed, here are some of the best space photographs taken in 2023.
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You’d never notice one star in the galaxy that wasn’t from around here. Astronomers have now found that a star right near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way likely originated in a smaller galaxy that ours devoured.
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Phosphorus – a key ingredient for life as we know it – was thought to be relatively rare in space. But now, astronomers have detected a surprising amount of the stuff on the fringes of the galaxy, suggesting life may be more common in the cosmos.
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One of the biggest cosmological mysteries centers on a discrepancy in how fast the universe is expanding. A new study comes to an intriguing solution by applying a modified theory of gravity and an unsettling “supervoid” that our galaxy resides in.
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The James Webb Space Telescope may have been touted a successor to Hubble, but the old-timer still has some life left in it. These two iconic instruments have now teamed up to take a deep-field image of the colorful “Christmas Tree galaxy cluster.”
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Astronomers have discovered evidence of a theorized type of black hole lurking in the distant universe. Known as an “Outsize Black Hole,” this object could help explain some fundamental cosmic mysteries, including how supermassive monsters form.
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NASA’s anticipated Roman Space Telescope is taking shape, and will soon measure light from a billion galaxies, perform a microlensing survey deep in the Milky Way, monitor hundreds of millions of stars and peer into unseen galactic neighborhoods.
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