Stars

The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its infrared eyes to a neighboring nursery of young stars known as the Tarantula Nebula, and pierced through the dust to capture an infant star during its formative stages.

Astronomers have taken the sharpest images ever of the most massive star in the known universe. With these new images the scientists refined just how big the star is, and in the process revised our ideas of how big stars could possibly ever get.

Astronomers have measured the strongest magnetic field ever found in the universe. The honor goes to a powerful type of neutron star, with a surface magnetic field of over 1.6 billion Tesla.

Astronomers have detected an extremely strange radio signal from a distant galaxy that pulses with a heartbeat-like rhythm. This signal lasted about 1,000 times longer than other fast radio bursts, and had a clear periodic pattern to its pulses.

By now you’ve no doubt seen the first batch of images from NASA’s powerful new James Webb Space Telescope. But the scope of the achievement is hard to appreciate without context, so here they are side-by-side with Hubble’s views of the same regions.

Astronomers have discovered bizarre “blue blobs” in space. These blobs are clusters of young, blue stars that are isolated from any parent galaxy, suggesting they formed from a galactic “belly flop.”

The most comprehensive picture of the Milky Way just got more detailed. Gaia's third data release covers almost 2 billion stars, including their makeup and movements, plus new catalogs of starquakes, binary systems, variable stars and other objects.

Astronomers have discovered a strange neutron star that challenges our understanding of them – but may help unlock the mystery of fast radio bursts. The object spins far slower than any known neutron star, and gives off seven types of radio pulses.

NASA has released a huge new report that astronomers are calling Hubble’s magnum opus. Analyzing 30 years of data from the famous space telescope, the new study makes the most precise measurement yet of how fast the universe is expanding.

Astronomers have discovered what may be the brightest pulsar in the sky. Despite its intense light the pulsar has long evaded detection, and was only revealed thanks to a telescope equipped with some cosmic “sunglasses.”

Astronomers have discovered a strange intergalactic ring that may be the first of its kind found. The large radio circle lurks between the Milky Way and a neighboring galaxy, and its discoverers suggest it may be the remains of an unusual supernova.

Hubble has spotted the most distant single star ever seen, about 12.9 billion light-years from Earth. The light from this star was emitted soon after the Big Bang, and has been magnified by a galaxy and stretched out by the expansion of the universe.