Astronomers have long proposed that there must be intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) in space. Now, scientists from the University of New Hampshire have captured the best evidence so far of the existence of these mysterious middleweights, as one emerges from the dark to snack on a star.
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Like fireworks that linger for millennia, nebulae are some of the most photogenic objects in the universe. These vast clouds of dust and gas represent both the birth and death of stars. New Atlas has collected some of the most breathtaking nebula images ever taken.
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Here on Earth, 80 years of advertising has told us that diamonds are special, but our shiny stones have nothing on the weird and wonderful forms seen out in space. Now, astronomers have found that mysterious microwave signals around stars could be caused by swirling clouds of diamond dust.
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Astronomers have detected some strange objects at the center of the Milky Way. They look like ordinary clouds of gas, but seem to have a solid core that keeps them together. The truth may lie somewhere in-between. These G-objects, as they’re known, seem to be stars hiding under puffy shrouds of dust
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In August 2017, astronomers observed a collision between two neutron stars so powerful it produced gravitational waves, flares in visible light, radio waves, x-rays and a gamma ray burst. Now that things have quietened, astronomers have studied the strange object created in the cosmic collision.
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A new computer model could help astronomers to interpret the radiation emitted by supermassive black holes as they rip apart and devour unfortunate stars. These extreme "feeding" episodes are known as Tidal Disruption Events (TDEs), and are thought to be incredibly rare.
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Astronomers have captured the most detailed view to date of the region of space surrounding the famous Tarantula Nebula – a 1,000 light-year wide swirling cloud of cosmic gas, the core of which is illuminated by some of the brightest and most massive stars ever detected.
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A new eye has joined the hunt for planets around nearby stars. The instrument, dubbed SPIRou, has been installed at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, where it has achieved first light by snapping the spectrum of the star AD Leonis.
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An international team of astronomers has completed the most comprehensive ultraviolet survey of the local universe to date, with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope. The survey could help scientists better understand how stars come to form, and how galaxies like our own evolve over time.
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Elements like oxygen, carbon and nitrogen weren’t very common until the first stars had fired up, burnt out and exploded. Now, astronomers using ALMA have detected the most distant – and hence, earliest – signature of oxygen, in a galaxy 13.28 billion light-years away.
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