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Globular star cluster

The International Astronomical Union defines a planet as a celestial body that orbits the sun, is massive enough that gravity has forced it into a spherical shape, and has cleared away other objects near its orbit around the sun. Scientists now recognize the existence of thousands of planets, but the IAU definition applies only to those within our solar system. The new proposed definition specifies that the body may orbit one or more stars, brown dwarfs or stellar remnants and sets mass limits that should apply to planets everywhere.

The qualities and behavior of dark matter, the invisible 'glue' of the universe, continue to be shrouded in mystery. Though galaxies are mostly made of dark matter, understanding how it is distributed within a galaxy offers clues to what this substance is, and how it's relevant to a galaxy's evolution.

These three bright nebulae are often featured on telescopic tours of the

Up to 60% of near-Earth objects could be dark comets, mysterious asteroids that orbit the sun in our solar system that likely contain or previously contained ice and could have been one route for delivering water to Earth, according to a new study.

Most known black holes are either extremely massive, like the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of large galaxies, or relatively lightweight, with a mass of under 100 times that of the Sun. Intermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) are scarce, however, and are considered rare 'missing links' in black hole evolution.

A international team of astronomers has made an exciting discovery about the temperate exoplanet LHS 1140 b: it could be a promising 'super-Earth' covered in ice or water.

Do other stars have planets like our Sun?

An exoplanet infamous for its deadly weather has been hiding another bizarre feature -- it reeks of rotten eggs, according to a new study of data from the James Webb Space Telescope.

Why are these clouds multi-colored?

Found among the rich starfields of the Milky Way,

A glow from the summit of

A mysterious remnant from a rare type of supernova recorded in 1181 has been explained for the first time. Two white dwarf stars collided, creating a temporary 'guest star,' now labeled supernova (SN) 1181, which was recorded in historical documents in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. However, after the star dimmed, its location and structure remained a mystery until a team pinpointed its location in 2021. Now, through computer modeling and observational analysis, researchers have recreated the structure of the remnant white dwarf, a rare occurrence, explaining its double shock formation. They also discovered that high-speed stellar winds may have started blowing from its surface within just the past 20-30 years. This finding improves our understanding of the diversity of supernova explosions, and highlights the benefits of interdisciplinary research, combining history with modern astronomy to enable new discoveries about our galaxy.

A Beautiful Trifid

Big, bright, and beautiful,

Mysterious, light-colored swirls on Moon's surface could be rocks magnetized by magma activity underground, laboratory experiments confirm.

The clouds may look like an oyster, and the stars like pearls,

What's happened since the universe started?

Astronomers have discovered the first millisecond pulsar in the stellar cluster Glimpse-CO1.