Space Exploration News – Latest Headlines

Nearby pulsars shed light on the antimatter puzzle

There are too many high-energy positrons in the cosmic rays reaching the Earth. These positrons could be being produced by pulsars in our vicinity. The most recent measurements have practically excluded this possibility, strengthening the competing and much more exotic hypothesis concerning the origin of the excess positrons.

November 17, 2017 Read more

Contracting white dwarf observed for the first time

Astrophysicists have found the first observational evidence for a contracting white dwarf. Constant high spin-up rate of a star of this type, located in an enigmatic binary system, can be easily explained if the white dwarf is contracting.

November 14, 2017 Read more

Duo of titanic galaxies captured in extreme starbursting merger

Pair of exceptionally rare hyper-luminous galaxies discovered with ALMA.

November 13, 2017 Read more

A 'cosmic snake' reveals the structure of remote galaxies

The formation of stars in distant galaxies is still largely unexplored. For the first time, astronomers have now been able to closely observe a star system six billion light-years away.

November 13, 2017 Read more

Winds blowing off a dying star

Stars like our Sun eject large amounts of gas and dust into space, containing various elements and compounds. Asymptotic giant branch -- AGB -- phase stars, near their end of life, are particularly significant sources of such substances in our galaxy.

November 10, 2017 Read more

Star exploded, survived, and exploded again more than 50 years later

An international team of astronomers discovered a star that exploded multiple times over a period of 50 years.

November 8, 2017 Read more

Researchers model Coulomb crystals to understand star evolution

These calculations can be used to understand the thermal evolution of neutron stars and white dwarfs.

November 7, 2017 Read more

Using powerful new telescope astronomers observe one of the oldest objects in the universe

Astronomy team image one of the first massive galaxies to form, 12.8 billion years ago.

November 6, 2017 Read more

Forest of molecular signals in star forming galaxy

Astronomers observed the galaxy NGC 253 and for the first time, they resolved the locations of star formation in this galaxy down to the scale of a molecular cloud, which is a star formation site with a size of about 30 light-years.

November 6, 2017 Read more

ALMA discovers cold dust around nearest star

The ALMA Observatory has detected dust around Proxima Centauri. The data also hint at the presence of an outer dust belt and may indicate the presence of a planetary system. These structures are similar to the belts in the solar system and are expected to be made from rock and ice.

November 3, 2017 Read more

The inner secrets of planets and stars (w/video)

After a five-year, 1.74 billion-mile journey, NASA's Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter's orbit in July 2016, to begin its mission to collect data on the structure, atmosphere, and magnetic and gravitational fields of the mysterious planet.

November 1, 2017 Read more

New research looks at how 'cosmic web' of filaments alters star formation in galaxies

The National Science Foundation has granted $280,000 to an international collaboration that is investigating galaxies that extend along this 'cosmic web' of filaments.

November 1, 2017 Read more

'Monster' planet discovery challenges formation theory

NGTS-1b is the largest planet compared to the size of its companion star ever discovered in universe and contradicts theories that a planet of this size could not be formed by such a small star.

October 31, 2017 Read more

Monster colliding black holes might lurk on the edge of spiral galaxies

The outskirts of spiral galaxies like our own could be crowded with colliding black holes of massive proportions and a prime location for scientists hunting the sources of gravitational waves.

October 30, 2017 Read more

Jupiter's X-ray auroras pulse independently

Jupiter's intense northern and southern lights pulse independently of each other according to new research using ESA's XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatories.

October 30, 2017 Read more

Scientist devises a solar reactor to make water and oxygen from moon rocks

An aerospace engineer has built a machine to make water and oxygen from the lunar regolith, powered by solar energy.

October 27, 2017 Read more

Scientists detect comets outside our solar system

Team of professional and citizen scientists identifies tails of comets streaking past a distant star.

October 26, 2017 Read more

Dark matter: The mystery substance physics still can't identify that makes up the majority of our universe

One of the most vexing gets at the heart of what our universe is actually made of. Cosmological observations have determined the average density of matter in our universe to very high precision. But this density turns out to be much greater than can be accounted for with ordinary atoms.

October 25, 2017 Read more