In late 2019 the red supergiant closest to Earth, Betelgeuse, began to rapidly fade in brightness. Initially thought to be a sign that the star was about to go supernova or that it experienced a dust storm, scientists have now found that it was caused by a gigantic star spot 10% colder than the rest of the star’s surface.

Astronomy can help us diagnose breast cancer and heart disease

Astronomers have come across a monstrously large black hole with a gargantuan appetite. Each passing day, the insatiable void known as J2157 consumes gas and dust equivalent in mass to the sun, making it the fastest-growing black hole in the universe. The sheer scale of J2157 is almost unfathomable, but we can try pinning some numbers on it nevertheless.

The recent unusual behaviour of the star Betelgeuse could finally have been explained, after new work by astronomers. The star has been dimming strangely in recent months, with scientists speculating that it could be about to explode into a supernova or was otherwise being subject to an unknown process. Now new research has shown that the most likely explanation of the dimming is large star spots on Betelgeuse's surface, which have caused it to dim.

Why is astrology considered unscientific, while economics—which also uses complex mathematical formulas to 'predict' the future—is regarded as a perfectly respectable field of study, despite its many failed forecasts?

An unusually bright star in a nearby galaxy has gone missing, in a mystery of cosmic proportions. An object inside the Kinman dwarf galaxy has disappeared from view, according to new research published today in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. This massive and exceptionally bright blue star was hypothesized to exist based on astronomical observations made between 2001 and 2011, but as of 2019, it is no longer detectable.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field that can be 1000 times more powerful than that of the Earth.

A black hole about 390 million light-years away has caused the biggest eruption ever seen in the universe. The supermassive black hole sits at the center of a galaxy located in the Ophiuchus galaxy cluster. Its eruption was about five times greater than the last record-holder.

The formation of our solar system was a messy affair. Most of the material that existed before its formation—material formed around other, long-dead stars—was vaporized, then recondensed into new materials. But some grains of that material, formed before the sun's birth, still persist.

Astronomers think they’ve spotted the first example of a superbright blast of radio waves, called a fast radio burst, originating within the Milky Way. Dozens of these bursts have been sighted in other galaxies — all too far away to see the celestial engines that power them (SN: 2/7/20). But the outburst in our own galaxy, detected simultaneously by two radio arrays on April 28, was close enough to see that it was generated by a highly magnetic neutron star called a magnetar.

To be considered Earth-like, a planet must be rocky, roughly Earth-sized and orbiting Sun-like (G-type) stars. It also has to orbit in the habitable zones of its star—the range of distances from a star in which a rocky planet could host liquid water, and potentially life, on its surface.

The discrepancy between how fast the universe seems to be expanding and how fast we expect it to expand is one of cosmology’s most stubbornly persistent anomalies. Cosmologists base their expectation of the expansion rate — a rate known as the Hubble constant — on measurements of radiation emitted shortly after the Big Bang. This radiation reveals the precise ingredients of the early universe. Cosmologists plug the ingredients into their model of cosmic evolution and run the model forward to see how quickly space should be expanding today.

A German-Russian space telescope has just acquired a breakthrough map of the sky that traces the heavens in X-rays. The image records a lot of the violent action in the cosmos - instances where matter is being accelerated, heated and shredded. Feasting black holes, exploding stars, and searingly hot gas.

Several years ago, planetary scientist Lynnae Quick began to wonder whether any of the more than 4,000 known exoplanets, or planets beyond our solar system, might resemble some of the watery moons around Jupiter and Saturn. Though some of these moons don't have atmospheres and are covered in ice, they are still among the top targets in NASA's search for life beyond Earth. Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa, which scientists classify as "ocean worlds," are good examples.

The sun might be a magnetic slacker. A census of stars similar to the sun shows that our own star is less magnetically active than others of its kind, astrophysicists report in the May 1 Science. The result could support the idea that the sun is in a “midlife crisis,” transitioning into a quieter phase of life. Or, alternatively, it could mean that the sun has capacity for much more magnetic oomph than it’s shown in the past.

Perhaps the night sky has been saved. SpaceX, the private rocket company founded by Elon Musk, announced changes last week to a constellation of tens of thousands of internet satellites it plans to send to orbit. The alterations could prevent these false stars from polluting our views of the heavens and interfering with the science of astronomy — though issues remain for scientists to contend with.

On August 10, 1888, at around 8:30 p.m., a bright fireball lit up the skies above a mountain village in the Kurdistan Region near modern-day Sulaymaniyah, Iraq. The fireball carried a trail of “smoke” as it passed toward a neighboring village. Then, it exploded overhead, leveling crops and raining stones for 10 minutes on a “pyramid-shaped” hill below. The falling debris killed one man and paralyzed another.

A flagship observatory that will map the heavens in spectacular detail and search the skies for asteroids on a collision course with Earth faces serious disruption from a new wave of satellites bound for space, the Guardian has learned.

The discovery of terrestrial exoplanets, planets that orbit stars outside the solar system, has been one of the most significant developments in modern astronomy. Several exoplanets lie in the “habitable zones” of stars, where planets are thought to be able to maintain liquid water on their surface, and have the potential to host life.

For over 50 years, humans have tried to pull back the thick clouds of Venus to study its surface. Most observations have tapped the long wavelengths of radar to pierce the cloud layers. Now, scientists have combined long-term radar observations of the planet’s surface to try to clarify a longstanding mystery behind the length of Venus' day.