Astronomy news, features and articles

For the first time, scientists have imaged the elusive south pole of the sun. The images captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft reveal our star's magnetic field is a powder keg ready to blow.

Astronomers have discovered a new class of bright, long-lasting cosmic explosions that offer a new probe into studying the universe's most distant black holes.

Last night's "Strawberry Moon" hovered lower in the night sky than it had done since 2006. Here are some stunning global snaps of June's full moon during the major lunar standstill.

A neutron star's final moments may spark violent starquakes, monster shock waves, and even a fleeting, never-before-seen object called a black hole pulsar.

For the first time, astronomers have used a ground-based telescope to observe polarized microwave light from the universe's earliest epoch. Their observations could give them a better understanding of how the universe evolved.

NASA's Perseverance rover regularly images a Sherlock Holmes–themed maze to calibrate its chemical-hunting SHERLOC instrument.

New images of a young star, 2MASSJ1612, could have captured the birth of a giant gas planet larger than Jupiter.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe has directly observed a powerful magnetic explosion in the sun's corona that could help us predict geomagnetic storms on Earth.

The famous black hole M87 keeps surprising us. New research calculates its spin speed to be at 80% of the theoretical limit, with matter falling into its maw even faster.