Stories by Ken Croswell

A giant black hole may have hurled a star cluster toward us at record speed
 

The sun's closest stellar neighbor will soon reveal its mass—and possibly its planets—when it passes in front of a distant star

A Saturn-size star just 40 light-years away will outlive nearly all of its peers

Two dwarf galaxies may have smashed together in our Local Group, sparking the nearest "starburst"

A double star just 20 light-years from Earth is surprisingly young, offering bright prospects for planet hunters

Observations show two planets circling their star's equator at a 45-degree angle

New observations suggest the small world's air never vanishes

The search for the Milky Way's missing satellites

A newly measured distance to stellar debris in the northern sky links it more firmly to an explosion observers saw in 1181

Oscillations inside the giant planet perturb its rings, promising new clues to the nature of its enormous interior

Exotic galaxies provide snapshots of the Milky Way's youth

A newborn star's iron abundance foretells whether its gas giants face a violent future

New Hubble data shed light on how the Milky Way's two brightest satellite galaxies maintain their youthful glow

Scientists plan to use the intrepid space probe to observe uncharted worlds

Two intrepid galaxies dash past the Milky Way—and dazzle astronomers with their beauty and brilliance as new observations reveal why the pair is so flamboyant

Hubble observations of a speedy galaxy weigh on the Milky Way and indicate that our galaxy is at least a trillion times as massive as the sun

Long thought nearly extinct, the Andromedid meteor shower staged a surprise outburst last December—and may return in 2018 and 2023

A new model suggests that short-period binary stars are rare because they tend to merge into one

Hot stars booted out of their galactic homes may be responsible for creating the conditions that led to today's universe

Exploding white dwarf stars and an unexpected abundance of iron explain the chemistry of a unique star cluster

A simple diagram, which celebrates its centennial this year, continues to serve as the most essential conceptual tool in stellar astrophysics