Stars

Researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and McMaster University in Canada have shown that the structures of dust rings surrounding young stars can be used to estimate the masses of hidden planets.

By determining the ages of more than 100,000 giant stars, researchers have identified the edge of our galaxy's star-forming disc for the first time, revealing that the most recent star formation is closer to the center than we expected.

A pair of stars spiralling around each other. That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts we’ve detected, called ASKAP J1745.

A recent analysis by a team of researchers from Poland and the US points to a surprising new method for world-building, one that could generate some of the largest populations of planets in the Universe.

To assess the plausibility of alien visitors, it’s necessary to understand the obstacles that an extraterrestrial vessel would need to overcome to reach Earth.

Like the spin of a cosmic coin, a unique set of particle oscillations could ultimately decide the fate of the Universe’s biggest suns. These new findings suggest that current descriptions of core-collapse supernovae may actually be incomplete.

Astronomers have detected mysterious X-ray signals coming from a nearby white dwarf star for more than 40 years. We may now know where they’re coming from – the death throes of a planet being torn to shreds and raining down on the star.

Astronomers have discovered an exoplanet with a tail, like a gigantic comet. The planet, known as WASP-69b, is slowly evaporating in the radiation of its host star.

The Sun is the biggest fish in our small pond of a solar system, but it’s a mere minnow compared to the whales that dwell out in the cosmos. New telescope images show a gigantic star casually blowing bubbles 75 times bigger than our Sun.

Our solar system might still bear the scars from an extremely close shave with an alien star. Such an encounter – the closest pass we know of – would have shaken up objects on the outskirts and might even mean there’s no Planet Nine after all.

Astronomers have watched a supermassive black hole take two bites of a star, and predicted when it might go back for a third. If it does, this should make for an intriguing stellar light show.

Astronomers have detected a really bizarre radio signal from space that repeats every hour, cycling through three different states. While they have some ideas about its origin it can’t be explained by our current understanding of physics.