Stars News

March 9, 2025

Top Headlines

Ultra-Hot Nova Observed Erupting: Surprising Chemical Signature

Mar. 5, 2025 — Astronomers have for the first time observed a recurring nova outside of the Milky Way in near-infrared light. The data revealed highly unusual chemical emissions as well as one of the hottest temperatures ever reported for a nova, both indicative ...

Neural Network Deciphers Gravitational Waves from Merging Neutron Stars in a Second

Mar. 5, 2025 — Binary neutron star mergers emit gravitational waves followed by light. To fully exploit these observations and avoid missing key signals, speed is crucial. An interdisciplinary team of researchers ...

Small and Large Planets Have Significantly Different Upbringings

Mar. 5, 2025 — Studying the orbits of thousands of exoplanets shows that large planets tend to have elliptical orbits, while smaller planets tend to have more circular orbits. This split coincides with several other classic features in the exoplanet population, ...

Beyond Our Solar System: Scientists Identify a New Exoplanet Candidate

Mar. 4, 2025 — The discovery of new exoplanets can help scientists understand how planets form and ...

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How Do the Universe's Highest-Energy Particles Originate? Magnetic Outflows Stemming from Star Mergers, Analysis Concludes

Feb. 28, 2025 — Physicists provide a viable and testable explanation for how UHECRs are ...

NASA's Hubble Provides Bird's-Eye View of Andromeda Galaxy's Ecosystem

Feb. 27, 2025 — Located 2.5 million light-years away, the majestic Andromeda galaxy appears to the naked eye as a faint, spindle-shaped object roughly the angular size of the full Moon. What backyard observers don't ...

Young Star Clusters Give Birth to Rogue Planetary-Mass Objects

Feb. 27, 2025 — How do rogue planetary-mass objects -- celestial bodies with masses between stars and planets -- form? An international team of astronomers has used advanced simulations to show that these enigmatic ...

In Ancient Stellar Nurseries, Some Stars Are Born of Fluffy Clouds

Feb. 20, 2025 — Researchers have found that stars in the early universe may have formed from 'fluffy' molecular clouds. Using the ALMA telescope to observe the Small Magellanic Cloud -- whose environment is similar ...

Einstein Probe Catches X-Ray Odd Couple

Feb. 18, 2025 — Lobster-eye satellite Einstein Probe captured the X-ray flash from a very elusive celestial pair. The discovery opens a new way to explore how massive stars interact and evolve, confirming the unique ...

Astronomers Gauge Livability of Exoplanets Orbiting White Dwarf Stars

Feb. 13, 2025 — Astronomers used a 3D global computer model to compare the climates of exoplanets in different stellar and orbital configurations. They found that a planet orbiting a white dwarf star would offer a ...

Phoenix Galaxy Cluster in the Act of Extreme Cooling

Feb. 13, 2025 — New findings explain the Phoenix cluster's mysterious starburst. Data confirm the cluster is actively cooling and able to generate a huge amount of stellar fuel on its ...

Temperamental Stars Are Distorting Our View of Distant Planets

Feb. 7, 2025 — 'Temperamental' stars that brighten and dim over a matter of hours or days may be distorting our view of thousands of distant planets, suggests a new ...

Dusting for Stars' Magnetic Fingerprints

Feb. 5, 2025 — Astronomers have succeeded in observing the magnetic field around a young star where planets are thought to be forming. The team was able to use dust to measure the three-dimensional structure ...

Spinning Neutron Star Gains Enormous Magnetic Fields

Feb. 4, 2025 — An international team of scientists have modelled formation and evolution of strongest magnetic fields in the ...

Wobbling Stars Reveal Hidden Companions in Gaia Data

Feb. 4, 2025 — Using data from the European Space Agency's Gaia mission, scientists have found a huge exoplanet and a brown dwarf. This is the first time a planet has been uniquely discovered by Gaia's ...

Straight Shot: Hubble Investigates Galaxy With Nine Rings

Feb. 4, 2025 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a cosmic bullseye! The gargantuan galaxy LEDA 1313424 is rippling with nine star-filled rings after an 'arrow' -- a far smaller blue dwarf ...

The Hidden Power of the Smallest Microquasars

Jan. 29, 2025 — Researchers found for the first time evidence that even microquasars containing a low-mass star are efficient particle accelerators, which leads to a significant impact on the interpretation of the ...

A Super-Earth Laboratory for Searching Life Elsewhere in the Universe

Jan. 28, 2025 — Thirty years after the discovery of the first exoplanet, we detected more than 7000 of them in our Galaxy. But there are still billions more to be discovered! At the same time, exoplanetologists have ...

New Measurements of Solar Radiative Opacity Thanks to Helioseismology

Jan. 27, 2025 — Researchers have pioneered an innovative method using helioseismology to measure the solar radiative opacity under extreme conditions. This groundbreaking work not only reveals gaps in our ...

Astronomers Thought They Understood Fast Radio Bursts: A Recent One Calls That Into Question

Jan. 21, 2025 — Fast radio bursts are mysterious and brief flashes of radio emissions that were thought to be produced by magnetars, highly magnetized rotating neutron stars. Yet magnetars appear primarily in young ...

First Fast Radio Burst Traced to Old, Dead, Elliptical Galaxy

Jan. 21, 2025 — Astronomers previously thought all FRBs were generated by magnetars formed through the explosions of very young, massive stars. But new FRB is pinpointed to the outskirts of 11.3-billion-year-old ...

NASA's Hubble Traces Hidden History of Andromeda Galaxy

Jan. 17, 2025 — In the years following the launch of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have tallied over 1 trillion galaxies in the universe. But only one galaxy stands out as the most important nearby ...

This Tiny Galaxy Is Answering Some Big Questions

Jan. 16, 2025 — Leo P, a small galaxy and a distant neighbor of the Milky Way, is lighting the way for astronomers to better understand star formation and how a galaxy grows. Scientists have reported finding that ...

Large and Small Galaxies May Grow in Ways More Similar Than Expected

Jan. 16, 2025 — Galaxies like the Milky Way grow by merging with smaller galaxies over billions of years, unlike dwarf galaxies, which have long been thought to lack the heft to attract mass and grow in the same ...

NASA's Pandora Mission One Step Closer to Probing Alien Atmospheres

Jan. 16, 2025 — Pandora, a small satellite mission poised to provide in-depth study of at least 20 known planets orbiting distant stars to determine the composition of their atmospheres cleared an important ...

Not All Hot Jupiters Orbit Solo

Jan. 15, 2025 — Hot Jupiters are giant planets initially known to orbit alone close to their star. During their migration towards their star, these planets were thought to accrete or eject any other planets present. ...

Three Tiny 'Stellar-Ghost-Town' Galaxies Discovered

Jan. 15, 2025 — By combining data from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys and the Gemini South telescope, astronomers have investigated three ultra-faint dwarf galaxies that reside in a region of space isolated from ...

NASA's Hubble Tracks Down a 'Blue Lurker' Among Stars

Jan. 13, 2025 — The name 'blue lurker' might sound like a villainous character from a superhero movie. But it is a rare class of star that NASA's Hubble Space Telescope explored by looking deeply into ...

X-Ray Flashes from a Nearby Supermassive Black Hole Accelerate Mysteriously

Jan. 13, 2025 — Astronomers observed flashes of X-rays coming from a supermassive black hole at a steadily increasing clip. The source could be the core of a dead star that's teetering at the black hole's ...

Beyond the 'Dragon Arc', a Treasure Trove of Unseen Stars

Jan. 6, 2025 — Taking advantage of a cosmic 'double lens,' astronomers resolved more than 40 individual stars in a galaxy so far away its light dates back to when the universe was only half its present ...

The Carbon in Our Bodies Probably Left the Galaxy and Came Back on Cosmic 'Conveyer Belt'

Jan. 3, 2025 — Scientists recently discovered that the giant 'conveyer belt' currents that push star-forged material out of our galaxy and pull it back in can also transport carbon atoms. That means that ...

Scientists Pin Down the Origins of a Fast Radio Burst

Jan. 1, 2025 — Astronomers pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brief and brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team's novel technique might also ...

Clever Trick to Cook Stars Like Christmas Pudding Detected for First Time

Dec. 20, 2024 — Researchers have found evidence of magnetic fields associated with a disc of gas and dust a few hundred light-years across deep inside a system of two merging galaxies known as Arp220. They say these ...

Supermassive Black Holes Halt Rapid Construction in an Ancient Celestial City

Dec. 18, 2024 — Galaxy clusters -- the big cities of the universe -- are home to many giant elliptical galaxies that have completed their growth and are not forming stars. However, it is still unclear what has shut ...