Astronomy

What Is This Mysterious Glowing Spiral Four Hundred Light Years Away from Earth?

This weird glowing spiral is located four hundred light years away from Earth, in the constellation Lupus. You may think it’s a spiral galaxy, like our Milky Way. It’s not. It’s the strangest star ever found, a new kind. It’s a spiral star. Called SAO 206462, it’s a completely new finding. According to Carol Grady,…

Space & Spaceflight Jesus Diaz

How to Spot Tomorrow Night’s Asteroid Flyby

Tomorrow night, near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass between our planet and the orbit of the moon, coming within 0.85 lunar distances of the Earth’s surface as it courses along its orbit. Astronomers say the object, which measures about 400 meters in diameter, is the largest asteroid to fly this close to home in 35…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

New galactic survey reveals relatively few stars have the right stuff to create life

To get life, you first need organic molecules, and the easiest way to get those is from the compound methanol. Now it seems there are very specific conditions needed to create methanol and, ultimately, life… and most stars don’t have them. The organic molecules that are the basis for life here on Earth — and,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Faraway gamma-ray burst reveals what the most ancient galaxies were made of

The image up top is an artist’s impression of a gamma-ray burst blasting through a pair of galaxies on its billion-year journey to Earth. These ancient, incredibly powerful explosions reveal the composition of early galaxies. It’s not what we expected. One recent gamma-ray burst, which has the catchy name of GRB 090323, has attracted a…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

The First Ever Star With Spiral Arms

Chances are you’ve seen your fair share of interesting looking stars here on io9, but you’ve never seen one quite like this. According to NASA, it’s the first star we’ve ever seen with spiral-arm-like structures. The name of the star is SAO 206462. It’s a young star more than four hundred light years from Earth…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

The faraway star clusters on the other side of the galaxy

That bright explosion of stars on the right is a globular star cluster, one of just 160 such clusters in the galaxy. It’s making its big debut after long being hidden behind the dust of the center of the galaxy. Believe it or not, that star cluster was once the dimmest known globular cluster, which…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Planets sacrifice themselves to protect us from supermassive black holes

Many galaxies have gigantic black holes located at their center, but we’re not usually able to actually see just how gigantic they are. Supermassive black holes are shrouded in huge dust clouds…which might be essential for the development of life. According to a research team from the University of Leicester, these mysterious clouds might well…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Asteroid Lutetia is the first pristine relic of a failed planet

The asteroid belt is full of remnants of the ancient solar system, giant clumps of rock that might have formed a planet under different circumstances. Now we’ve found the first asteroid that’s exactly how it was billions of years ago. The asteroid Lutetia is the best – and possibly only – example we’ve got of…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Behold the terrifying claws of Mars

This Halloween eve, look upon in horror at the mark of a strange and terrible beast that roams the plains of the red planet. What horrible monster could leave such an eerie footprint? Also, it’s over six miles long. Of course, this isn’t so much a gigantic footprint actually as it is a geological formation,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Pluto has regained its position as the ninth largest body to orbit the Sun. Probably.

When scientists first discovered the dwarf planet Eris back in 2005, they claimed that the icy body was actually larger than Pluto. But when Eris’ orbit passed in front of a dim star late last year, astronomers got their first chance to take a good hard look at the dwarf planet’s actual diameter. And as…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

NASA solves an 1,800 year old supernova mystery

In 185 CE, Chinese astronomers reported the presence of an incredibly bright “guest star” that appeared suddenly in the sky and stayed there for months. This was the first recorded supernova…and astronomers are only now understanding what it really is. By the 1960s, astronomers were pretty much certain that their ancient counterparts had seen a…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Beautiful new NASA photo captures the diversity of Saturn’s many moons

Since 2004, NASA’s Cassini orbiter has been collecting data on Saturn, its rings and its moons, capturing breathtaking images of them all as it courses through space. The photo you’re looking at is among the latest of Saturn and its satellites to be captured by Cassini, one that reveals through stunning composition the difference in…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Blue straggler stars are eternally young mysteries

Stars known as blue stragglers have pretty much discovered the cosmic equivalent of the fountain of youth – they should be old and nearly out of fuel, yet they continue to burn hot and bright blue like a young star. Figuring out just what makes these blue stragglers tick has long baffled astronomers, but now…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Gaze upon the cosmic mystery of the Waterfall Nebula

Just like regular clouds here on Earth, it’s easy to see shapes in the interstellar clouds of dust and gas that make up nebulae. But this waterfall-shaped nebula is particularly spectacular… and nobody quite knows why it looks like that. Located in the Great Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, nebula HH-222 is considered one of the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Dark star clusters are like regular star clusters…except full of black holes

Some star clusters have no business surviving. For instance, there’s a tiny cluster right next to our galaxy’s supermassive black hole, which should be ripped apart by its intense gravity. But there’s more to this cluster than meets the eye. This particular cluster, IRS 13E, can barely even be called one, considering it’s made up…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

A baby solar system holds thousands of oceans worth of water

We recently discovered the first direct evidence of comets bringing water to alien planets, and now we can go one step further. The planetary disk around the star TW Hydrae has enough water in it to support thousands of oceans. https://gizmodo.com/comets-are-raining-down-water-on-a-faraway-planet-5851639 Located 176 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra, TW Hyrdae is the closest…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Must Watch: Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, and Lawrence Krauss discuss our future in space

I’ll come right out and say it: you need to watch this video. It’s quite a bit longer than a lot of what we feature here on io9, but the weekend is almost here, and you owe it to yourself to set aside 53 minutes to watch a veritable scientific dream team talk about humanity’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez

Merger Wars: My galaxy could eat your galaxy

What happens when two galaxies meet each other in the dark alley of space? Well, if you’re around in 4 billion years, you could find out first hand when the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are predicted to collide. In the meanwhile, kill some time and help researchers with Merger Wars. Merger Wars is a…

io9 Keith Veronese

Comets are raining down water on a faraway planet

The Eta Corvi solar system is like a window into how our own solar system looked billions of years ago. All of Eta Corvi is being bombarded by giant comets — the exact same process that created Earth’s oceans. What’s more, observations by NASA’s Spitzer telescope show signs of huge dust clouds close to the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

Tiny failed star is the coldest object we’ve ever photographed

Imagine a hot summer day in the middle of the desert. That temperature might be dangerously hot here on Earth, but it’s almost impossibly cold for any star. But that’s the rather pathetic situation for a newly discovered brown dwarf. The brown dwarf, designated WD 0806-661 B, is the coldest star-like object we’ve ever been…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins

What Is This Mysterious Glowing Spiral Four Hundred Light Years Away from Earth?

How to Spot Tomorrow Night’s Asteroid Flyby

New galactic survey reveals relatively few stars have the right stuff to create life

Faraway gamma-ray burst reveals what the most ancient galaxies were made of

The First Ever Star With Spiral Arms

The faraway star clusters on the other side of the galaxy

Planets sacrifice themselves to protect us from supermassive black holes

Asteroid Lutetia is the first pristine relic of a failed planet

Behold the terrifying claws of Mars

Pluto has regained its position as the ninth largest body to orbit the Sun. Probably.

NASA solves an 1,800 year old supernova mystery

Beautiful new NASA photo captures the diversity of Saturn’s many moons

Blue straggler stars are eternally young mysteries

Gaze upon the cosmic mystery of the Waterfall Nebula

Dark star clusters are like regular star clusters…except full of black holes

A baby solar system holds thousands of oceans worth of water

Must Watch: Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pamela Gay, and Lawrence Krauss discuss our future in space

Merger Wars: My galaxy could eat your galaxy

Comets are raining down water on a faraway planet

Tiny failed star is the coldest object we’ve ever photographed

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