The Milky Way
In summer, in a clear place with dark night skies, an irregular glowing band arcs high overhead. The ancients likened […]
In summer, in a clear place with dark night skies, an irregular glowing band arcs high overhead. The ancients likened […]
Observations by Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based instruments show that the first galaxies took shape as little as one billion
The most beautiful galaxies are called spirals. The Milky Way is a spiral, and so is the Andromeda galaxy (M31).
Astronomer Edwin Hubble was studying an object in the autumn constellation Andromeda known as the Andromeda Nebula. Viewed through a
How do astronomers find planets outside our solar system? The most successful search method used to date is called the
The discovery of many giant planets orbiting other stars shows us that planets — at least Jupiter-like planets — probably
Are we alone in the universe? This question has captured the imaginations of scientists, theologians, and philosophers for millennia. And
If the Sun were compressed to a diameter of just four miles (6 km), its escape velocity would equal the
When a star like the Sun dies, it casts its outer layers into space, leaving its hot, dense core to
The words astronomers use to describe stars evoke the fairy tales of childhood: white dwarfs, red giants, red dwarfs, and