Space

Up to six percent of red dwarf stars have habitable, Earth-sized planets. Red dwarfs are the most common stars in our galaxy, so that means the closest Earth-like planet could be just 13 light-years…

Messier 106 looks like lots of other galaxies yet it hides a number of secrets. But now, it has slightly fewer than before, thanks to citizen science astronomers. The first mystery people always…

Newly forming stars feed on huge amounts of gas and dust from dense envelopes surrounding them at birth and a team of astronomers reported observing an unusual "baby" star that periodically emits…

Saturn rocks! Or rather not, actually. The planet is made of gas for the most part, but it does have a belt of dust infested ice around it. It is this belt that makes Saturn the 'template' planet. If…

No, it is NOT a star! Several orders of magnitudes far from being a star actually. I am talking about quasars (quasi-stellar radio source) - often being described as distant stars. Oh, astronomers…

A new view of 20,000-year old supernova remnant W50 provides more clues to the history of this giant cloud that resembles a beloved endangered species, the Florida Manatee. W50 is nearly 700 light…

Most moons look ancient because their faces are pockmarked by thousands of craters but Titan, Saturn's largest moon, gets constant retouching because its craters are getting erased. Dunes of exotic,…

I experienced the highest density of colleagues with background from astrophysics when I worked at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. Mapping seems like an earthly matter, per definition, but it never…

Astronomers using  using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia, the Arecibo Telescope in Puerto Rico, and data from NASA's Spitzer and WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer)…

Astronomers have used the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes to simultaneously to peer into the stormy atmosphere of the brown dwarf called  2MASSJ22282889-431026, creating the most detailed "…