Nearly 4.5 million years ago, two enormous, blazing stars swung close to the solar system. They did not touch the sun, but they came close enough to leave a permanent mark on the thin mist of gas that ...

Dark matter, if it exists, is probably in the latter category. If hypothetical weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs) are real, their collisions with regular matter may have left fossil traces ...

How can artificial intelligence (AI) help astronomers identify celestial objects in the night sky? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to address as an international team ...

What can imaging supernovae (plural for supernova) explosions teach astronomers about their behavior and physical characteristics? This is what a recent study published in Nature Astronomy hopes to ...

Astrophysicists have achieved an eye-opening leap in understanding stellar death, capturing unprecedented, detailed images of two exploding stars that demonstrate these blasts are far more complicated ...

Artist’s conception of a magnetar surrounded by an accretion disk that is wobbling, or precessing, because of the effects of general relativity. Some models of magnetars suggest that high-speed jets ...

Astronomers have for the first time seen the birth of a magnetar—a highly magnetized, spinning neutron star—and confirmed that it's the power source behind some of the brightest exploding stars in the ...