stars

What happens when two stars fall into each other?

The universe is mostly empty, but once in a great while stars get close enough to crash into each other. Two stars recently combined to form Sco V1309. Find out what happened when they did. In 2008, two stars became one, only no one knew it yet. All anyone knew was a previously unknown star…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Mar 19

This Is Not a Van Gogh Painting

Instead, photographer Anton Jankovoy spent months camping out at the foot of Mount Everest, waiting for the right moment to capture the “star trails” with his camera in a single shot. The photograph itself takes hours to capture, as the stars move slowly through the sky. [Daily Mail]

Tech News Adrian Covert Mar 3

The strange galaxies of the Pisces constellation

Located some hundred million light-years from here, these colorful galaxies can be seen behind the stars that make up the constellation of Pisces. We don’t know exactly how these galaxies got here…but they’re certainly amazing sights to look at now. A NASA astronomer explains: This colorful cosmic skyscape features a peculiar system of galaxies cataloged…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 27

Life On Other Planets: No Star, No Problem!

Scientists now think it’s not only possible for life to exist on a planet which isn’t in orbit around a star, but that these vagabond planets might be key for spreading life throughout the universe. Experts previously hypothesized that conditions wouldn’t have enough gravity to hold water and be too cold and to sustain life.…

Space & Spaceflight Adrian Covert Feb 21

A ring of blue. A ring of pink. And a ring of black holes.

Four hundred and thirty million light-years from earth a ring of black holes is forming, possibly around some very nervous aliens. In the constellation Cetus lies ARP 147, the remains of a spiral galaxy and an elliptical galaxy that . . . interacted. For ‘interacted’ read, ‘boom.’ They plowed into one another, smushing enough matter…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 10

Stellar nursery is a giant, gaseous mountain range

This is nebula NGC 2174, located about 6400 light-years away. This amazing photograph makes the nebula look like the peak of a giant dust mountain, with strange pink stars dominating its summit. In fact, the stars are locked in cosmic battle with the gas mountain, and it’s only a matter of time before the stars…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 9

A new model of the universe shows the first stars are still alive

Until recently, astronomers believed that the first stars were ultra-giants which blew themselves apart long ago. Now a new model of the universe suggests that some the first stars of the universe may still be burning today. Although space appears to be full of vast stretches of nothing, between thirteen and fourteen billion years ago…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Feb 4

The tiny island of Sark is a window back to the Middle Ages – and that’s good for science

Sark is a tiny, car-free island in the English Channel that didn’t fully get rid of feudalism until 2008. Its nights are so reliably dark that it’s just been named the world’s first “dark sky island”, making the island one giant observatory for looking up at the night sky without any light pollution to get…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Feb 3

Awesome time-lapse photo turns Greek landmass into newest, weirdest planet

This might look like a strange work of modern art (or possibly a secret level in Super Mario Galaxy), but everything in this photo of the Greek promontory Sounio is completely real. Not convinced? We’ll explain what’s going on here. This photo is a 24-hour mosaic compiling lots of different images taken at both night…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jan 17

What stars have been the most popular in the last 200 years?

If you charted the appearance of certain stars in books through the last two centuries, which ones would get the most hits? It’s an interesting question that Greg Laughlin (UC-Santa Cruz) ponders on his systemic site, using Google’s Ngram viewer as his tool. Ngram lets you plug in the terms of your choice and chart…

io9 Paul Gilster -- Centauri Dreams Jan 15

Astrology Is Still Bullshit and the Universe Doesn’t Care About You

No! NO! My sign has changed! According to some made up crap by a bunch of people who deal in made up crap, I’m now a Sagittarius, because of planetary movement. Unfortunately for those who care, this means absolutely zero. https://gizmodo.com/why-did-your-zodiac-sign-change-we-asked-the-astronome-5733004 The stars are giant flaming orbs of gas, floating in a vacuum. They dictate…

Tech News Sam Biddle Jan 14

The Blood-red Chaos at the Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy

The Whirlpool Galaxy looks beautiful and swirling in a visible light image (at left.) But the infrared view, at right, shows a maelstrom of chaos, revealing the dense lanes of dust around normally invisible clusters of stars. Click the image above to enlarge — as always, you can right-click and select “save link as” to…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Jan 14

500,000 High-Def TVs Are Required to View the Largest Digital Image of the Night Sky

Astronomers have released the largest digital image of the night sky ever made—to be mined for future discoveries—and it would apparently take 500,000 high-definition TVs to view it in its full glory. It is actually a collection of millions of images taken since 1998 with a 2.5-metre telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico.…

Space & Spaceflight David Shiga - New Scientist Jan 11

Watch the Milky Way unfurl across the sky (and watch for constellations!)

Behold this gorgeous time-lapse video of the Milky Way rising in the night sky, captured by Justin Majeczsky at a gorgeous Lake Tahoe vantage point. Look closely and you can see Sagittarius! Lake Tahoe Milky Way Night Time Lapse from Justin Majeczky on Vimeo. As Bad Astronomy points out, the video really shows off the…

io9 Meredith Woerner Dec 24

This Intergalactic Telephone Would Be Powered by the Sun

In the far future, humans might communicate across great interstellar distances—light years, in fact—using an immense intergalactic communications array powered by the Sun. Such an array would “live” about 550 astronomical units from the Sun at a point in space where light rays bent by gravitational lensing converge. At this point, the array would serve…

Space & Spaceflight Jack Loftus Dec 19

Scientists Say There’s a Planet Lined With Diamonds

The extremely hot planet Wasp-12b has such a high carbon-to-oxygen ratio that scientists are saying that the planet’s surface might be littered with diamonds. The lead researcher specifies: “You might see land masses and mountains made up of diamonds.” Astronomers are saying that it’s the first carbon-rich planet ever observed. Planets in our solar system…

Space & Spaceflight Casey Chan Dec 10

There may be 3 times as many stars in the universe as we thought

Check out that extra-bright galaxy towards the top of this image. That’s an elliptical galaxy, which are among the largest galaxies in the universe. And now scientists believe these galaxies hold five to ten times more stars than previously thought. Until recently, astronomers believed elliptical galaxies contained around a trillion stars each, as compared to…

io9 Charlie Jane Anders Dec 1

After 50 Years, Galactic ET Listening Post SETI Hits Redial with “Project Dorothy”

The astronomers, skeptics and believers who use SETI to scan the stars for extraterrestrial intelligences are retraining their sights on stars previously scanned by telescopes for signs of life 50 years ago. Second time’s the charm? The revisiting effort, called Project Dorothy, is part of the 50th anniversary of Project Ozma, the precursor to the…

Space & Spaceflight Jack Loftus Nov 14

Glowing bars are the sign of a dying galaxy

A recent study shows that the intense bar of light you see here, joining the arms of this spiral galaxy, may be a sign of stellar death. In a paper published yesterday in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, scientists speculated that bars may kill off disk-shaped galaxies. Galaxies are formed as gravity…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Nov 9

Record-breaking neutron star packs twice the Sun’s mass into a twelve-mile-wide sphere

The most massive neutron star ever discovered has been found 3000 light-years away. The tiny star is twice as massive as the Sun but its diameter is mere miles across. This discovery confirms these stars really are made of neutrons. Neutron stars are the end result of collapsed stars that aren’t quite big enough to…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Oct 31

What happens when two stars fall into each other?

This Is Not a Van Gogh Painting

The strange galaxies of the Pisces constellation

Life On Other Planets: No Star, No Problem!

A ring of blue. A ring of pink. And a ring of black holes.

Stellar nursery is a giant, gaseous mountain range

A new model of the universe shows the first stars are still alive

The tiny island of Sark is a window back to the Middle Ages – and that’s good for science

Awesome time-lapse photo turns Greek landmass into newest, weirdest planet

What stars have been the most popular in the last 200 years?

Astrology Is Still Bullshit and the Universe Doesn’t Care About You

The Blood-red Chaos at the Heart of the Whirlpool Galaxy

500,000 High-Def TVs Are Required to View the Largest Digital Image of the Night Sky

Watch the Milky Way unfurl across the sky (and watch for constellations!)

This Intergalactic Telephone Would Be Powered by the Sun

Scientists Say There’s a Planet Lined With Diamonds

There may be 3 times as many stars in the universe as we thought

After 50 Years, Galactic ET Listening Post SETI Hits Redial with “Project Dorothy”

Glowing bars are the sign of a dying galaxy

Record-breaking neutron star packs twice the Sun’s mass into a twelve-mile-wide sphere

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