Milky way

In an artist's rendering, a red giant star and white dwarf star circle each other. Material ejected from the red giant gathers and heats in the white dwarf, catalyzing a bright explosion.

A Rare Nova Explosion Will Soon Bring a 'New Star' to the Night Sky—How to Catch a Glimpse

In an event that occurs only once every 80 years, a distant remnant of a star will grow much brighter, briefly becoming visible to Earth

A close-up of the Dragon's Egg Nebula, with two mismatched stars inside.

A Stellar Collision Birthed the 'Dragon's Egg' Nebula, a Puzzling Structure in the Milky Way

The colorful cloud of gas and dust has a violent origin—and this explains the unusual traits of two massive stars within it, astronomers say

An artist's illustration of Gaia BH3 and its companion star's "wobbling" orbit.

Astronomers Discover a 'Sleeping Giant' Black Hole in Our Galaxy—the Second-Closest Known to Earth

Called Gaia BH3, the dormant black hole is 33 times more massive than the sun, making it the largest recorded stellar black hole in the Milky Way

The new image of the Milky Way's black hole, seen in polarized light. It shows the organized magnetic fields that surround the black hole itself, from which no light can escape.

Astronomers Capture Dazzling New Image of the Black Hole at the Milky Way's Center

The first image of the black hole taken in polarized light, the new view shows the supermassive structure's magnetic fields and hints that it could be hiding an enormous jet

The supernova remnant Cassiopeia A, captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope in near-infrared light. The image shows the expanding material from the blast colliding with gas released by the star before the explosion.

James Webb Telescope Captures Image of Supernova That 'Absolutely Shattered' a Star

The new image gives astronomers a near-infrared look at the stellar explosion called Cassiopeia A, located around 11,000 light years away from Earth

RCW58, a Wolf-Rayet bubble nebula, is made of ejected material from the star WR 40, which shines at the center of the image.

See Ten Dazzling Space Images From the Astronomy Photographer of the Year Awards

From comets to nebulas to the Milky Way, the shots shortlisted in the annual competition capture the beauty of the cosmos from Earth

The IceCube Neutrino Observatory first detected evidence of neutrinos originating from outside the Milky Way a decade ago.

Scientists Find Ghostly Neutrino Particles From the Milky Way

It's no surprise that neutrinos come from within our galaxy, but the tiny, chargeless particles are very hard to detect

The supernova Cassiopeia A, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI)

See the James Webb Telescope's Stunning New Snapshot of an Exploded Star

The supernova, known as Cassiopeia A, is located roughly 11,000 light-years from Earth and could offer insights into cosmic dust and star death

An artist's impression of the nearby black hole and the star that hinted to its existence. 

Astronomers Discover Closest Known Black Hole to Earth

Researchers believe there may be even nearer ones that have yet to be detected

The James Webb Space Telescope's latest image: the Orion Nebula

See the Best View Yet of the Orion Nebula

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured young stars and vibrant gas and dust within the popular constellation

NIRCam enhanced closeup of the galaxy GLASS-z13

The James Webb Space Telescope Might Have Spotted the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen

Scientists think the light detected by the telescope is from just 300 million years after the Big Bang

The first-ever image of a black hole in the Milky Way

Here’s What the Black Hole in the Center of the Milky Way Looks Like

A team of scientists from around the world collaborated to get a visual peek of the supermassive object

A mosaic image of our Milky Way galaxy created over the course of nearly 12 years.

See Astonishing Milky Way Mosaic Image That Took 12 Years to Create

A Finnish astrophotographer created the 1.7 gigapixel image by stitching together photos with a total exposure time of roughly 1,250 hours

This is the all-sky map created by the eROSITA X-ray telescope, represented in false color (red for energies 0.3-0.6 keV, green for 0.6-1.0 keV, blue for 1.0-2.3 keV). The original image was smoothed in order to generate the above picture.

An X-Ray Hourglass Is Emerging From the Middle of the Milky Way

Astronomers spotted the two gargantuan bubbles of charged particles ballooning out from the middle of our home galaxy

The Blue Ring Nebula is invisible to the human eye, but telescopes can measure the ultraviolet light, which is shown here in blue.

Astronomers Crack the Case of the Blue Ring Nebula

The source of the dazzling display puzzled scientists for more than a decade

Dust-rich outflows of evolved stars similar to the pictured Egg Nebula are plausible sources of the large presolar silicon carbide grains found in meteorites like Murchison.

Meteorite Grains Are the Oldest Known Solid Material on Earth

The oldest dust sample, perhaps 7 billion years old, predates the formation of our planet and the sun

Illustration of a hot Jupiter planet in the Messier 67 star cluster. Hot Jupiters are so named because of their close proximity — usually just a few million miles — to their star, which drives up temperatures and can puff out the planets.

What Astronomers Can Learn From Hot Jupiters, the Scorching Giant Planets of the Galaxy

Many of the planets that are roughly the size of Jupiter orbit right next to their stars, burning at thousands of degrees

The image reveals the black hole at the center of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides 55 million light-years from Earth and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the sun.

Astronomers Capture First-Ever Image of a Supermassive Black Hole

The Event Horizon Telescope reveals the silhouette of a black hole at the center of a galaxy 55 million light-years away

An ultraviolet image of the Andromeda galaxy, the closest major galaxy to the Milky Way, taken by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer space telescope. Like our own galaxy, Andromeda is a spiral galaxy with a flat rotating disk of stars and gas and a concentrated bulge of stars at the center.

Streams of Stars Snaking Through the Galaxy Could Help Shine a Light on Dark Matter

When the Milky Way consumes another galaxy, tendrils of stellar streams survive the merger, containing clues about the universe's mysterious unseen matter

The positions of the globular clusters used to estimate the mass of the Milky Way.

How Much Does the Milky Way Weigh?

Measurements from the Gaia satellite and Hubble Space Telescope show our galaxy tips the scales at about 1.5 trillion solar masses

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