The first black hole ever photographed is still surprising researchers. Immortalized by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019, M87* , was recently spotted emitting a massive gamma-ray flare. Studying it may help scientists figure out how particles behave near black holes. Matter falling toward a black hole forms an accretion disk — a hot, swirling…

Sun, star around which Earth and the other components of the solar system revolve. It is the dominant body of the system, constituting more than 99 percent of its entire mass. The Sun is the source of an enormous amount of energy, a portion of which provides Earth with the light and heat necessary to…

23 March – Saturn’s rings “disappear” Saturn gained the nickname “the jewel of the Solar System” thanks to its magnificent system of rings. On 23 March, however, the iconic rings are set to disappear. This is due to the Earth’s orbit crossing the plane of the rings, a rare event that occurs about once every…

Astronomers have made a startling discovery. Using data from the eRosita X-ray instrument, researchers say they’ve discovered a “cosmic tunnel” that connects our solar system to other stars. Scientists have long known that our solar system exists in a Local Hot Bubble. This bubble is believed to have formed following several supernovas over the past…

This artist’s impression shows the strange object AR Scorpii. In this unique double star, a rapidly spinning white dwarf star (right) powers electrons up to almost the speed of light. These high-energy particles release blasts of radiation that lash the companion red dwarf star (left) and cause the entire system to pulse dramatically every 1.97…

Radio astronomy has revealed that early-formed planets within a protoplanetary disk can influence the creation of additional planets, acting like a cascade where each planet aids in forming the next. Credit: SciTechDaily.com New observations show that planets forming in protoplanetary disks like that around PDS 70 can trigger the formation of subsequent planets. This finding,…

New research suggests that a troubling disparity in the rate of expansion of the universe, known as the Hubble constant, may arise from the fact Earth sits in a vast underdense region of the cosmos. The issue has come to be known as the “Hubble tension.” It arises from the fact that there are two…

Was planetary formation different during the early universe than today? This is what a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated whether planets could form with a lack of heavy elements, building off a 2003 finding from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which identified a 13-billion-year-old…

Astronomers have discovered the first binary stars orbiting a supermassive black hole. The stellar pairing in question orbits the cosmic titan at the heart of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. The binary stars, designated D9, were found in data collected by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), located atop Cerro Paranal, an 8,645-foot-tall (2,635-meter) mountain in…

European Space Agency (ESA), European space and space-technology research organization founded in 1975 from the merger of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) and the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), both established in 1964. Members include Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland,…