A recent image from the Dark Energy Camera shows an act of galactic cannibalism, with a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way about to devour a nearby dwarf galaxy that has wandered into its path. The dramatic interaction is ...
In billions of years’ time, once our sun has used up all its fuel and puffed up to become a red giant before throwing off layers to form a planetary nebula, all that will remain at its heart is a ...
The cosmos seems to have a preference for things that are round. Planets and stars tend to be spheres because gravity pulls clouds of gas and dust toward the center of mass. The same holds for black holes—or, to be ...
Every year, around 1,000 Type Ia supernovas erupt in the sky. These stellar explosions brighten and then fade away in a pattern so repeatable that they’re used as “standard candles”—objects so uniformly bright that astronomers can deduce the distance to ...
