Galaxies

This month Comet ISON will fly by the sun in an encounter that could destroy the object, or elevate it to greatness

Astronomers are discovering distant planets that orbit two-star systems, uncovering bizarre and wondrous worlds unlike anything in our solar system

"Hair" is a term among physicists as a stand-in for any other measure needed to describe a black hole other than its mass, its angular momentum and its electric charge

Although the two bodies have significant differences, researchers point to surprising similarities in their topographical evolution

Hubble observations of the smallest galaxies known help explain why so few of them exist

In this excerpt from Five Billion Years of Solitude author Lee Billings chronicles the pioneering scientists who have led the hunt for extraterrestrial intelligence in their quest to answer the haunting question: Is humanity alone in the universe?

Mysterious dark matter is responsible for our existence in the Milky Way galaxy, as revealed in this video for a new show at New York City’s Hayden Planetarium

The Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope team is considering a new observing strategy that would focus on the center of the galaxy

2013 MacArthur picks include scientists taking on prosthetics, audio preservation and describing planets beyond our solar system

Anomalies in the universe's relic radiation could contradict the evidence for a level cosmos

The strongest of these bright arms reaches out from the center of the Coma Cluster toward a small subgroup of galaxies, called NGC 4911, about 2.1 million light-years away

A budget struggle has the world's largest steerable radio telescope making sacrifices in the name of science