Accretion

Defining the word "moon" is harder than you might think

Astrophysicists from China and Australia have found that the birth masses of neutron stars can be described by a unimodal distribution that smoothly turns on at 1.1 solar masses and peaks at 1.27 solar masses, before declining as a steep power law.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured direct images of multiple gas giant planets within an iconic planetary system. HR 8799, a young system 130

As NASA astronauts aim for landings in 2027, geologists find surprises in recently retrieved samples from the far side…

A new form of black hole archeology, linking spin to gas and dust, has revealed that these cosmic titans spin faster than expected.

Learn about the new perspective on Earth's reduction of moderately volatile elements, a discovery made possible by meteorites from the early solar system.

In 2018, astronomers observed that the corona of 1ES 1927+654, an actively accreting, 1.4-million-solar-mass black hole located in a galaxy around 270 million light-years away, suddenly disappeared, before reassembling months later.

The odd atmosphere of a fledgling exoplanet is causing astronomers to question leading theories of how planets form.

The James Webb telescope has spotted three gigantic "red monster" galaxies that were spawned soon after the Big Bang. They're so large they could rewrite the laws of galactic evolution.

Tiny grains from asteroid Ryugu are revealing clues to the magnetic forces that shaped the far reaches of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago. The findings suggest the distal solar system harbored a weak magnetic field, which could have played a role in forming the giant planets and other objects.

Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have detected a population of 64 brown dwarf candidates with masses ranging from 50 to 84 Jupiter masses in the star cluster NGC 602.

'They died long ago.'

The energy of moon-forming can have a big say in whether large or doomed smaller moons are built.

What did scientists do this week? Exactly four things, all of which are summarized below.

Dinkinesh, the asteroid visited by NSA's Lucy mission in 2023, has a small moon that is made from two objects touching each other.

The giant planet is a world of extremes

Dead stars known as white dwarfs, have a mass like the sun while being similar in size to Earth. They are common in our galaxy, as 97% of stars are white dwarfs. As stars reach the end of their lives, their cores collapse into the dense ball of a white dwarf, making our galaxy seem like an ethereal graveyard.

Imagery from the solar-powered spacecraft provides close-ups of intriguing features on the hellish Jovian moon.

The moon underwent a reversal around 4.2 billion years ago, flipping itself "inside out" after a giant impact to create the picture of the faithful lunar...

This particular star explosion is unique for its brief yet intense display, completing its cycle in merely a week