Tag Archives: astronomers

Like many people, I grew up in a solar system of nine planets. It’s the same solar system we live in now, of course, but the definition of a “planet” changed in 2006 to exclude poor little Pluto and its frosty kin. That was before we’d even seen the little …

Humanity has existed for 300,000 years, give or take a millennium. That might sound like a long time when the average human lives at most a few decades, but it’s really just a cosmic blink of the eye. Even if Homo sapiens exceeds all expectations and survives both political strife …

A pair of molecular clouds known as Taurus and Perseus are famous among astronomers. These star-forming regions are just 400 and 1,000 light-years from Earth, respectively, offering a glimpse of how stars come to be in the galaxy. Now we know a bit more about the origin of these clouds …

On the evening of Sept. 13, something hit Jupiter, producing an explosion and a flash of light visible even to amateur astronomers with off-the-shelf telescopes. Now, the hunt is on to figure out what the impactor could have been. The collision was first reported by Brazilian amateur astronomer José Luis …

The number of known planets in our solar system has changed over time, but we’re currently sitting at eight since the demotion of Pluto to dwarf planet. However, some scientists believe there is a ninth planet lurking out there in the inky blackness at the edge of the solar system. …

The sky is full of stars, and for the first time in human history, we know what’s orbiting some of them. There are more than 4,000 confirmed exoplanets, but just a few have been directly imaged. A young gas giant called PDS 70c is one of them, and now astronomers …

The heavens appear to move throughout the year, but that’s just because Earth is moving. The real or “proper motion” of stars and galaxies was beyond our ability to measure until fairly recently, but bigger, more powerful telescopes have helped paint a picture of an evolving universe. The European Space …

    (Credit: sharply_done/Getty Images)In 2015, Billionaire Yuri Milner launched the Breakthrough Listen project, an effort to scan the million closest stars for radio signals that could indicate intelligent life. Astronomers working on the project have announced the discovery of just such a signal from Proxima Centauri, which is just …

  We know much more about how the universe works today than we did just a few decades ago, but there will always be new mysteries to solve. In recent years, scientists have puzzled over the riddle of fast radio bursts (FRBs). These short-lived electromagnetic beacons can outshine entire galaxies, …