A miniature extraterrestrial version of Africa's Nile River Valley has been spotted on Saturn’s moon Titan - it stretches more than 400 km from its "headwaters" to a large sea.   Have you ever…

In January of 2012, a new X-ray source flared and rapidly brightened in the Andromeda galaxy (M31), l2.5 million light-years from earth. The event was classified as an ultraluminous X-ray source (ULX…

Vega is a summer star in the Northern Hemisphere, visible toward the west at sunset. Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra and, at only 25 light years away, quite close, cosmically…

In the constellation Taurus, astronomers have found the youngest still-forming solar system yet seen - an infant star called  L1527 IRS, surrounded by a swirling disk of dust and gas 450 light-…

The universe has always had some trace of heavy elements, such as carbon and oxygen, for as far back as astronomers could 'see'. These elements, originally churned from the explosion of massive stars…

The combined power of ESA's Herschel space observatory and the ground-based Keck telescopes mean hundreds of previously unseen starburst galaxies have been characterized, revealing extraordinary high…

A new analysis of topographic and gravity data from Titan, the largest moon orbiting Saturn,  indicates its icy outer crust is twice as thick as has generally been thought. Is there a vast ocean…

Astronomers find planets in strange places and wonder if they might support life. One such place would be in orbit around a white or brown dwarf. While neither is a star like the sun, both glow and…

Spectacular jets powered by the gravitational energy of a super massive black hole in the core of the elliptical galaxy Hercules A are shown off by the combined imaging power of the Hubble Space…

 Astronomers theorize that an as-yet-unidentified form of matter is responsible for 90 percent of the gravity within galaxies and clusters of galaxies but because it is detected via its gravity…