Grades 6-8 (Ages 11-13) Archives — Page 6 of 9

The Local Group

These galaxies move through space as a single unit, bound together by their mutual gravitational pull. The number of galaxies […]

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