Astronomy
Everything We Thought We Knew About How Stardust Spreads Across the Cosmos Is Wrong
An analysis of stardust 180 light-years from Earth had some illuminating lessons
Celebrate the New Year With This Cosmic Champagne Cluster
A new look at the cluster offers evidence of a dramatic space crash
The Photos That Shaped Our Understanding of Earth’s Shape
Visual evidence of our planet’s curvature is relatively recent
This Big Space Sandwich Broke a Record
A particularly massive and chaotic baby planetary system captured in exquisite detail
Saturn’s Rings Are Thicker Than We Thought
New research points to a wide band of particles, invisible to telescopes
Did a Rogue Planet Bring Order to Our Solar System?
New models suggest a celestial bypasser left us with the current orbital lineup
Monster Stars Roamed the Cosmos at the Dawn of Time
“A bit like dinosaurs on Earth—they were enormous and primitive”
These Baby Stars Have Mysterious Companions
The Gaia telescope peeked through gas and dust to pick out the possible beginnings of new planets around infant stars
Cosmic Collision Caught on Camera
Astronomers witnessed the aftermath of not one but two collisions in space
Titan May Not Host a Massive Ocean After All
But the moon’s slushy interior could still harbor pockets of life-sustaining water
How Earth’s Atmosphere Reached the Moon
And what this might mean for colonizing other worlds
Astronomers Observe Spacetime Whirlpool for the First Time
This theoretical phenomenon was discovered after being predicted by Einstein more than a century ago
