Milky Way

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer will probe the physics behind black holes, neutron stars and other dynamic cosmic objects

Volcanoes + astronomy = amazing images

An answer to why we’ve not been visited from the future?

We live on a spinning and orbiting world, but we don't usually think about our other, greater motions through the cosmos—maybe we should

If dark matter comes in both matter and antimatter varieties, it might accumulate inside dense stars to create black holes
 

Unexplained gamma rays streaming from the galactic center may have been produced by dark matter, but more mundane explanations are also possible
 

…living in a place that makes doing cosmology hard. Let’s backtrack a little. Unless you’ve been living under a particularly thick and insulating rock you’ll know that in recent months the world of experimental cosmology (what would have previously been called observational cosmology, or just plain old astronomy) has been on tenterhooks waiting to see [...]

Cosmic dust is crucial to the birth of stars and planets, but how so much of it came to be present in the young universe has been a mystery

Newly discovered lobes stretch tens of thousands of light-years above and below the Milky Way's disk. Where they come from remains a mystery

Mysterious light at the center of the milky way could be our first look at dark particles

Five remarkable stars on the other side of our galaxy promise new insight into the outer reaches of our home turf

For the past year, astronomers around the world have been watching the center of the Milky Way in anticipation of a once-per-eon event. Right around now (or, technically, 24,000 years ago--that's roughly how far away the galactic center is in light years), a cloud of gas and dust plummeting toward our galaxy's supermassive black hole, [...]