Space news stories

Eleven billion years ago, a hot, active, galaxy that looked like an eye glared across space.

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found quasi-periodic flickers in millimeter-waves from the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius (Sgr) A*.

Astronomers believe they may have found the first direct evidence of a new planet being born. A dense disc of dust and gas has been spotted surrounding a young star called AB Aurigae, about 520 light years away from Earth.

You’ve probably been a little too preoccupied during the tumultuous start to this year to notice that 2020 has also been a high-drama time for comets visiting the inner solar system.

Image from Diego Toscan (Wiki Commons)

A rock floating in space is an asteroid. While it is zooming through our atmosphere it is called a meteor. Once it hits the ground, we call it a meteorite.

Spied through a normal telescope, the galaxy PKS 2014−55 is an unremarkable smudge of bright light. But look again in radio wavelengths, and you’ll see that the galaxy is hiding a gargantuan, glowing treasure at its center — and X marks the spot.

Astronomers have produced a remarkable new image of Jupiter, tracing the glowing regions of warmth that lurk beneath the gas giant’s cloud tops.

Alexander Wendt is one of the most influential political scientists alive. Here’s his case for taking UFOs seriously.

We can now add atmospheric craziness to WASP-79b’s already substantial exotic appeal. The gas-giant exoplanet, which lies about 780 light-years from Earth, circles extremely close to its bright host star…

Astronomers have a new candidate in their search for the nearest black hole to Earth. It’s about 1,000 light-years away, or roughly 9.5 thousand, million, million km, in the Constellation Telescopium. That might not sound very close, but on the scale of the Universe, it’s actually right next door.

Image from Creative Commons

Researchers have spent decades looking for evidence of ancient water on Mars. As technology has progressed, more evidence has come to light that rivers, lakes and even oceans were once abundant on the red planet.

Life can thrive in a 100% hydrogen atmosphere, according to a new study. The finding could completely change our understanding of how (and where) life might exist in the universe.

Like other comets, Halley is a cosmic litterbug; about every 76 years as it sweeps closest to the sun, it leaves a “river of rubble” in its wake along its orbit. When the Earth interacts with that rubble river, those comet bits race through our atmosphere at high speeds to produce the effect of “shooting stars.”

Ancient Mars is looking better and better as an abode for life. The famed Mars meteorite Allan Hills 84001 (ALH84001) contains 4-billion-year-old native organic molecules, the carbon-containing building blocks of life as we know it, a new study suggests.