The solar system is crowded with small objects like asteroids and comets, and most have stable orbits which keep them out of harm’s way, but a small proportion of them are in orbits that risk…

Predicting the behavior of a sunspot cycle is fairly reliable once the cycle is well underway (about 3 years after the minimum in sunspot number occurs(1). Prior to that time the predictions are less…

6,000 light-years away, in the constellation of Scorpius, nebula IC 4628 is a huge region filled with gas and clumps of dark dust which produces brilliant hot young stars. In visible light, these…

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has been hurtling away from the Sun since it was launched in 1977 and various reports have indicated that the spacecraft has left the heliosphere, the bubble of hot,…

Astronomers have provided the best three-dimensional map yet of the central parts of the Milky Way. It shows that the inner regions take on a peanut-like appearance from some angles. This odd shape…

Astronomers has begun to map the location of the most massive and mysterious objects in our galaxy – the Southern Milky Way and its giant gas clouds, where new stars are born. Using the 22 meter…

In the classic story "Mary Poppins", the lead character told the children she was caring for that she would stay until the wind changed. Things are a little different in Britain. In many parts of the…

The Sun is a magnetically active star. Its activity manifests itself as dark sunspots and bright faculae - granular structures that are slightly hotter or cooler than the surrounding photosphere - on…

Astronomers have explored more than 100 planetary nebulae in the central bulge of our galaxy and found that butterfly-shaped members of this cosmic family tend to be mysteriously aligned — a…

A long-standing mystery has been why most super massive black holes (SMBH) at the centers of galaxies have such a low accretion rate; they swallow very little of the cosmic gases available and…