For not being a planet, Pluto certainly has some intriguing features of one.  NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has sent back images of bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto as it…

As the search continues for Earth-size planets orbiting at just the right distance from their star, a region termed the habitable zone, the number of potentially life-supporting planets grows. In two…

I am presently in Athens for a few days, to give a seminar and meet the local group of CMS physicists. So I took the chance to visit yesterday evening the Astrophysics department of the University of…

What does it mean when a supermassive black hole exists in a place where it isn't supposed to exist? It's another puzzle of the early universe. Henize 2-10 is a small irregular galaxy that is not too…

51 Pegasi b, about 50 light-years from Earth in the constellation of Pegasus, was discovered in 1995 and was the the first confirmed exoplanet to be found orbiting an ordinary star like our Sun…

Astronomers have found evidence of a giant void that could be the largest known structure in the universe. The “supervoid” solves a controversial cosmic puzzle: it explains the origin of a large and…

In 2004, astronomers examining a map of the radiation leftover from the Big Bang (the cosmic microwave background, or CMB) discovered the Cold Spot, a larger-than-expected unusually cold area of the…

On Oct. 12, 2017, the asteroid 2012 TC4 is slated to whizz by Earth dangerously close. The exact distance of its closest approach is uncertain, as well as its size. Based on observations in…

Astronomers and planetary scientists have been waiting with bated breath for the first detailed close-up images of Ceres, the solar system’s largest asteroid. Now, with NASA’s Dawn spacecraft…

I wrote this when New Horizons was approaching Pluto, and expected to find new moons and possibly a ring system. So, just as a fun question to hook this post on, I asked, could it find a moon of a…