Stars
8 articles-
What Do Romantic Aliens See at the End of Their Alien Days?
When it comes to exoplanets, reality is catching up with science fiction. Take Kepler-16b, a Saturn-size planet roughly 200 light-years from Earth that circles not just one star but a pair of stars. Nicknamed Tatooine, after the fictional home planet of Luke and Anakin Skywalker, this world must see sunsets that are twice as breathtaking.Every […] -
How the Universe Made the Stuff That Made Us
When our Universe was in its infancy, the only element it contained was hydrogen, the simplest one—not nearly enough by itself to create interesting things like planets and people. By the time things cooled sufficiently for the single proton in each hydrogen atom to pair with a negatively charged electron, about 92 percent of the […] -
The Amazing Sky Calendar That Ancients Used to Track Seasons
The Nebra Sky Disk photographed in Basel, Switzerland, in 2006Dbachmann via Wikipedia Nautilus Members enjoy an ad-free experience. Log in or Join now . Henry Westphal is tired. It’s July 4, 1999, a Sunday. He and a friend are climbing the Mittelberg or “Central Hill,” a small mountain near Nebra, in central Germany. Both […] -
Why Galactic Collisions Are So Beautiful
The Antennae Galaxies are in a state of “starburst,” when the gas from the two colliding galaxies crashes together to produce huge numbers of new stars.ESA/Hubble & NASA According to the basic approximation, stars are formed by a stately, gradual process that belies the power it eventually unleashes. Within a great gas cloud, gravity slowly […] -
Falling in Love With the Dark
One astronomer has taken to U.S. National Parks to rekindle an old romance.
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Supernovas & Other Big Bangs: Where Your Body Comes From
“Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” —Carl Sagan, Cosmos That Carl Sagan quote is among one of his most famous sayings, […]
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When a Planet Is Not Really a Planet at All
As astronomers point their telescopes up at the sky to learn about the cosmos, they tend to push those devices’ abilities to their limits. The edge of what we can measure is, of course, where all the interesting things are happening. The downside of this ambition is that the conclusions drawn from the newest data […]
