Stars News

December 23, 2024

Top Headlines

Clever Trick to Cook Stars Like Christmas Pudding Detected for First Time

Dec. 19, 2024 — Researchers have found evidence of magnetic fields associated with a disc of gas and dust a few hundred light-years across deep inside a system of two merging galaxies known as Arp220. They say these regions could be the key to making the centres of ...

Supermassive Black Holes Halt Rapid Construction in an Ancient Celestial City

Dec. 18, 2024 — Galaxy clusters -- the big cities of the universe -- are home to many giant elliptical galaxies that have completed their growth and are not forming stars. However, it is still unclear what has shut ...

Survey of 26,000 Dead Stars Confirms Key Details of Extreme Stellar Behavior

Dec. 18, 2024 — A study of more than 26,000 white dwarf stars has confirmed a long-predicted but elusive effect in these ultra-dense, dying stars: Hotter white dwarfs are slightly puffier than cooler ones, even when ...

Binary Star Found Near Our Galaxy's Supermassive Black Hole

Dec. 17, 2024 — An international team of researchers has detected a binary star orbiting close to Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. It is the first time a stellar pair has been found in the vicinity of a supermassive black ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:03pm EST

Does the Exoplanet Trappist-1 B Have an Atmosphere After All?

Dec. 16, 2024 — Recent measurements with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) cast doubt on the current understanding of the exoplanet Trappist-1 b's nature. Until now, it was assumed to be a dark rocky planet ...

Planets Form Through Domino Effect

Dec. 13, 2024 — New radio astronomy observations of a planetary system in the process of forming show that once the first planets form close to the central star, these planets can help shepherd the material to form ...

Superflares Once Per Century

Dec. 12, 2024 — Stars similar to the Sun produce a gigantic outburst of radiation on average about once every hundred years per star. Such superflares release more energy than a trillion hydrogen bombs and make all ...

A New Galaxy, Much Like Our Own

Dec. 11, 2024 — Stunning new photographs by a team of astronomers have revealed a newly forming galaxy that looks remarkably similar to a young Milky Way. The extraordinary images give us an unprecedented picture of ...

Black Hole Debate Settled? Stellar-Mass Black Holes Found at the Heart of the Milky Way's Largest Star Cluster

Dec. 9, 2024 — Could a decades-long debate about the mysterious movements of stars in Omega Centauri, the largest star cluster in the Milky Way, finally be ...

Astronomers Witness the in Situ Spheroid Formation in Distant Submillimetre-Bright Galaxies

Dec. 5, 2024 — Researchers have used the ALMA telescope and found old elliptical galaxies in the universe can form from intense star formation within early galaxy ...

Astronomers Close to Solving Mystery of How Universe's Giant Galaxies Formed

Dec. 4, 2024 — Astrophysicists find the birth sites of gigantic elliptical galaxies which they say gives new clues about how they were formed. The galaxies look ...

Astronomers May Have Discovered the Answer to a Mysterious Stellar Event

Nov. 26, 2024 — Researchers have made a record-breaking astrophysical discovery while simultaneously uncovering a possible explanation for the rare and extreme astrophysical event known as long-period radio ...

Novel Supernova Observations Grant Astronomers a Peek Into the Cosmic Past

Nov. 25, 2024 — An international team of researchers has made new observations of an unusual supernova, finding the most metal-poor stellar explosion ever ...

Astronomers Take the First Close-Up Picture of a Star Outside Our Galaxy

Nov. 21, 2024 — While astronomers have taken about two dozen zoomed-in images of stars in our galaxy, unveiling their properties, countless other stars dwell within other galaxies, so far away that observing even ...

Astronomers Discover First Pairs of White Dwarf and Main Sequence Stars in Clusters, Shining New Light on Stellar Evolution

Nov. 19, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered the first pairs of white dwarf and main sequence stars -- 'dead' remnants and 'living' stars -- in young star clusters. This breakthrough offers new ...

New Idea May Crack Enigma of the Crab Nebula's 'Zebra' Pattern

Nov. 18, 2024 — A theoretical astrophysicist may have solved a nearly two-decade-old mystery over the origins of an unusual 'zebra' pattern seen in high-frequency radio pulses from the Crab ...

Three Galactic 'Red Monsters' in the Early Universe

Nov. 13, 2024 — Astronomers have identified three ultra-massive galaxies -- nearly as massive as the Milky Way -- already in place within the first billion years after the Big Bang. This surprising discovery was ...

A Formula for Life? New Model Calculates Chances of Intelligent Beings in Our Universe and Beyond

Nov. 12, 2024 — The chances of intelligent life emerging in our Universe -- and in any hypothetical ones beyond it -- can be estimated by a new theoretical model which has echoes of the famous Drake Equation. This ...

Mighty Radio Bursts Linked to Massive Galaxies

Nov. 6, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered where FRBs are more likely to occur in the universe -- massive star-forming galaxies rather than low - mass ...

Dance of Electrons Measured in the Glow from Exploding Neutron-Stars

Nov. 4, 2024 — The temperature of elementary particles has been observed in the radioactive glow following the collision of two neutron stars and the birth of a black hole. This has, for the first time, made it ...

NASA's Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega

Nov. 1, 2024 — Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega ...

One of the Fastest-Spinning Stars in the Universe

Oct. 30, 2024 — New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever ...

Dandelion-Shaped Supernova and Zombie Star

Oct. 24, 2024 — A historical supernova documented by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in 1181 has been lost for centuries, until very recently. Yet, the newly found remnant shows some stunning characteristics that ...

Rocky Planets Orbiting Small Stars Could Have Stable Atmospheres Needed to Support Life

Oct. 23, 2024 — A sequence of events during the evolution of certain rocky planets orbiting M-dwarfs, the most common stars in the universe, creates an atmosphere that would be stable over time. This is true for ...

Physicists Discover First 'Black Hole Triple'

Oct. 23, 2024 — A surprising discovery about the black hole V404 Cygnus is expanding our understanding of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they ...

Neutron Stars May Be Shrouded in Axions

Oct. 18, 2024 — Physicists have shown that extremely light particles known as axions may occur in large clouds around neutron stars. These axions could form an explanation for the elusive dark matter that ...

It's Twins! Mystery of Famed Brown Dwarf Solved

Oct. 16, 2024 — An international team of astronomers has figured out that a famous brown dwarf is actually a pair of tight-knit brown dwarfs, weighing about 38 and 34 times the mass of Jupiter, that whip around each ...

'Inside-Out' Galaxy Growth Observed in the Early Universe

Oct. 11, 2024 — Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the 'inside-out' growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big ...

Winds of Change: James Webb Space Telescope Reveals Elusive Details in Young Star Systems

Oct. 7, 2024 — Planet-forming disks, maelstroms of gas and dust swirling around young stars, are nurseries that give rise to planetary systems, including our solar system. Astronomers have discovered new details of ...

In Odd Galaxy, NASA's Webb Finds Potential Missing Link to First Stars

Oct. 3, 2024 — Looking deep into the early universe with NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have found something unprecedented: a galaxy with an odd light signature, which they attribute to its gas ...

NASA's TESS Spots Record-Breaking Stellar Triplets

Oct. 2, 2024 — Professional and amateur astronomers teamed up with artificial intelligence to find an unmatched stellar trio called TIC 290061484, thanks to cosmic 'strobe lights' captured by NASA's ...

Physicists Explore Possibility of Life Beyond Earth

Oct. 1, 2024 — Are there planets beyond Earth where humans can live? The answer is maybe, according to physicists examining F-type star ...

Scientists Discover Planet Orbiting Closest Single Star to Our Sun

Oct. 1, 2024 — Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet orbiting Barnard's star, the closest single star to our Sun. On this newly discovered exoplanet, which has at least half the mass of Venus, a year lasts ...

This Rocky Planet Around a White Dwarf Resembles Earth -- 8 Billion Years from Now

Sep. 26, 2024 — A 2020 microlensing event was caused by a planetary system with an Earth-like planet and brown dwarf. The star type was uncertain. The team has determined that the star is a white dwarf, a system ...