Since the 1990s, astronomers have found a handful of other dwarf planets in the belt, such as Eris and Sedna, along with ...

A rare event was observed as comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák dramatically slowed its rotation and then spun in the opposite ...

Supermassive black holes rarely travel alone. Most large galaxies hide one at the center, and when galaxies collide, the two ...

As next-generation telescopes map this outer frontier, astronomers are bracing for discoveries that could reveal hidden planets, strange structures, and clues to the solar system’s chaotic youth.

First its rotation slowed between March and May 2017, taking 46 hours to complete a spin where it had once taken only 20 hours. This occurred as the comet neared its closest point to the sun, roughly ...

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to ...

A “disappearing” star in the Andromeda galaxy is the closest and best candidate for a newborn black hole that astronomers have ever seen ...

Supermassive black hole binaries form naturally when galaxies merge, but scientists have only confidently observed a very few of these systems that are widely separated. Black hole binaries that ...

So cosmologists feel confident in modelling the universe using the “maximally symmetric” description of space-time in Einstein’s theory of general relativity. This symmetric vision for the universe, ...

Researchers propose detecting tight supermassive black hole binaries via repeating light flashes from stars magnified by gravitational lensing as the pair orbits, offering a new way to spot these ...

Comet Wierzchoś, also known as C/2024 E1, is rapidly brightening as it approaches its closest point to Earth next week. But experts predict it will eventually be thrown out of the solar system forever ...

For a single supermassive black hole, extremely strong lensing occurs only when a star lies almost exactly along the line of ...