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Fringe keeps proving over and over that everybody's sexier when they come from a dark, dystopian alternate universe. But it's basically a law of science fiction that the evil twin is always the sexier one. More »
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We usually think of black holes as cosmic destroyers, heartlessly devouring anything — even a star — that enters their enormous gravitational pull. But there might be another, more helpful side to supermassive black holes that we're only just discovering. More »
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Sailors have navigated by the light of Polaris for centuries, but all is not well with the North Star. There's something wrong with its light, and the best explanation might be that it's losing the equivalent of Earth's mass every year. More »
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This absolutely gorgeous image from the European Southern Observatory reveals a planetary nebula, the short-lived phenomenon between the death of a star and birth of a white dwarf that has nothing to do with planets. More »
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This gorgeous image is the work of the Spitzer Space Telescope, which snapped this infrared photo of the Cygnus-X star forming region in 2009. Every bright blue dot represents a star hotter and more massive than anything we can imagine. More »
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We now estimate that every star in the galaxy has at least one planet, but that is leaving aside the potentially billions more planets that were ejected from their solar system and are now hurtling through the universe all alone. More »
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There could be over 150 billion planets in our galaxy alone, which makes the chances of life on other words look very solid indeed. But there's one snag: the universe's most common stars might not support life at all. More »
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When astronomers talk about blue stars, they're generally talking about hot, young stars known as blue supergiants. But the blue stars you can see in the image up top are stars just like their Sun... except they've mysteriously turned blue. More »
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There's something very wrong about pulsar SXP 1062. This neutron star was created in the aftermath of a massive supernova. All the evidence says this star formed 40,000 years ago...but its slow spinning tells a far different, much older story. More »
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Just days after the first Earth-sized exoplanets were discovered, we find two more planets that are even smaller - but they weren't always like that. These pint-sized worlds are remnants of gas giants, the lone survivors of a dead star. More »
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A couple weeks ago, astronomers spotted black holes that were ten billion times more massive than our Sun, setting new records for the biggest black holes ever found. NASA has spotted another record-setting black hole...although it's not quite as impressive. More »
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Nobody even knew the star V838 Monocerotis existed before it suddenly became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way in January 2002. But we don't actually know why this star suddenly became 600,000 times brighter than the Sun. More »
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The universe simply doesn't operate on a human timescale. Events that are right about to happen in the cosmic sense could still be centuries away. But an extensive search discovered a star that really was right about to explode. More »
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If you want to see massive stars being born, look no further than the Carina Nebula, a violent star formation site that specializes in churning out big stars. But look fast...these stars could go supernova at any second, cosmically speaking. More »
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A few different nebulae have picked up the nickname "Butterfly Nebula", but NGC 6302 has a particularly good claim to that title. But coleopterists are advised to keep their distance, as the central star of this nebula is unimaginably hot. More »
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A giant star known as IRS 4 is one of the rare stars that's actually younger than the human race. Formed just 100,000 years ago, it's already leaving its mark on the cosmos, creating that huge hourglass-shaped nebula. More »
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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. More »
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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. More »
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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. More »
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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. More »
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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. More »
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This is NGC 2467, an energetic star-forming region found in the constellation Puppis. This image from the European Southern Observatory captures a gorgeous range of colors and countless stars being born...but I just can't stop staring into the nebula's eyes. More »
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What you see in this amazing video really is just a coincidence. A comet smashed into one side of the Sun just as a massive explosion ignited on the other side. Two entirely unrelated events...but they sure look awesome together. More »
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This is the Orion Nebula, a vast stellar nursery located 1,500 light-years away. We have the Spitzer Space Telescope and its infrared camera to thanks for this incredible image, which pretty much shatters the scale for gorgeous cosmic vistas. More »
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The huge gas planet CoRoT-2b is losing five million tons of matter every second, thanks to massive X-ray bursts coming from its parent star. The worst part? CoRoT-2b might actually be the architect of its own destruction. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5839818&view=rss&microfeed=true A brown dwarf located 47 light-years away is behaving very strangely. The would-be star's brightness is constantly changing, fluctuating by as much as 30% in just eight hours. This could be an atmospheric disturbance that dwarfs Jupiter's Great Red Spot. More »
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The whole point of white dwarfs is that they're the remains of stars not big enough to go supernova. Or so we thought. Many of these stars are held together by their super-fast spins... and slowing down could mean an explosion. More »
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Comet Garrard is blasting through the northern sky. Of course, it's easy to lose track of one little comet when it's passing through a giant star cluster. But no matter: you just have to look for the brightest, greenest one. More »
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This image taken by NASA's Wise Satellite is in the infrared spectrum, meaning it can reveal the light that is normally hidden behind thick, dark clouds of gas. But some clouds are so dark that no light can get through. More »
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Back in late March, NASA's Swift satellite detected a strange and unusual energy explosion in the constellation Draco. NASA now knows what it was: "the awakening of a distant galaxy's dormant black hole as it shredded and consumed a star." More »
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This tiny white dwarf and the shell of gas that surrounds it was once a star very much like our Sun, and the gas is positioned just right so that it looks like a faint, glowing ring in space. More »
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In the prevailing view, elliptical galaxies are long-dead places, full of stars that are all at least seven to ten billion years old and without the gas needed to form new stars. The truth may not be that simple. More »
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This photo isn't real, and not just because it's been squished. The circles up there are star trails completing a full orbit through the sky. That's never been photographed before...and you'll need to head to the Poles to do it. More »
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Comets will occasionally come a little too close to the Sun and crash into a fiery oblivion, but until now we had never been able to see it as it happened (though there have been some fake comet-smashes-the-sun videos circulating online). Witness the last moments of a sun-grazer comet. Blink and you may miss it - look at the photo below to see where the comet enters the frame. More »
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Located just 4.3 light-years away, the Alpha Centauri star system is our closest neighbor. But theirs is a very different solar system, as it's home with not one, not two, but three stars. Here's the short guide to Alpha Centauri. More »
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This video is a musical record of over three years worth of Type Ia supernova bursts, which are caused when white dwarf stars explode. University of Victoria astronomer Alex Parker and UC Santa Barbara's Melissa Graham assigned each blast an instrument and musical note depending on its properties. The result is the "Supernova Sonata." More »
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This star may not look like much, but in 1923 it changed our understanding of the universe forever. It showed us that the Milky Way wasn't a lonely island universe, but instead just one of billions and billions of galaxies. More »
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Over a thousand light-years from Earth, there are two white dwarfs, the ghostly remnants of stars much like our Sun. But these stars aren't ordinary white dwarfs, and their bizarre composition reveals a long, passive-aggressive history of mutually assured destruction. More »
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One of the problems of living inside our galaxy is that it can be devilishly tricky figuring out exactly what the Milky Way actually looks like. We might have discovered a whole new arm of our galaxy...and it's very strange. More »
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