Stars don’t shine forever. How long a star lives depends on how big and heavy it is. The bigger the star, the shorter its life. When a star significantly heavier than our sun runs out of fuel, it…

You’d think that astronomers would have found all the different classes of active galaxy nuclieu (AGN ) - after all, AGN such as quasars, blazars, and Seyfert galaxies are among the most luminous…

‘Killer’ electrons are highly energetic, negatively charged particles found in near-Earth space. They can critically, and even permanently, damage satellites in orbit, including telecommunication…

In just over a week's time NASA's Phoenix Lander is due to launch for Mars where it will probe the arctic landscape searching for conditions favourable for past or present life. UK scientists from…

Supermassive black holes have been discovered to grow more rapidly in young galaxy clusters, according to new results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. These "fast-track" supermassive black…

Astronomers have found a debris disk around HD 15115. As seen from Earth, the edge-on disk resembles a needle sticking out from the star. Astronomers think the disk's odd imbalanced look is caused by…

Frigid geysers spewing material up through cracks in the crust of Pluto’s companion Charon and recoating parts of its surface in ice crystals could be making this distant world into the equivalent of…

The orbiting X-ray telescopes XXM-Newton and Chandra have caught a pair of galaxy clusters merging into a giant cluster. The discovery adds to existing evidence that galaxy clusters can collide…

ESA’s Venus Express and NASA’s MESSENGER looked at Venus in tandem for a few hours in June. Here is the first set of images. The orbital geometry of Venus Express when MESSENGER skimmed past Venus on…

A unique set of observations, obtained with ESO's VLT, has allowed astronomers to find direct evidence for the material that surrounded a star before it exploded as a Type Ia supernova. This strongly…