A monster black hole has been detected.  With 17 billion solar masses, it is significantly heavier than models predict and could be the most massive black hole known to date.   …

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since 2004 so it has seen a lot - but it recently saw something that has not happened since 1997. Seasonal atmospheric circulation direction changes…

Astronomers have discovered vast comet belts surrounding two nearby planetary systems – GJ 581 and 61 Vir – known to host only Earth-to-Neptune-mass worlds.   Previously, scientists found that…

A jet of X-rays from the supermassive black hole in quasar GB 1428+4217, 12.4 billion light years from Earth, has been detected by NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory - the most distant X-ray jet…

Quasars are the luminous centers of distant galaxies powered by huge black holes.  Although black holes are noted for pulling material in, most quasars also accelerate some of the material…

NASA's Cassini mission has spotted a second feature shaped like the 1980s video game icon Pac-Man, this time on Saturn's moon Tethys.The pattern appears in thermal data obtained by Cassini's…

And now the news from Alpha Centauri…(Oh, I’ve waited for so long to utter those words! News. From Alpha Centauri. Wow!) After an incredible decade, in which the number of planets known…

The dwarf planet Makemake is about two thirds of the size of Pluto and farther from the Sun - but closer than Eris, the most massive so-called dwarf planet in the Solar System after the confusing…

The Exoplanet next door: Astronomers have discovered the lowest-mass planet yet orbiting a Sun-like star. But the even-more exciting news is that it orbits α Centauri B, a member…

The planetary nebula Abell 30 is located 5,500 light-years from Earth and it has given astronomers a lookl at a dying Sun-like star that came briefly back to life after giving up the stellar ghost,…