The Sun has been in the news a lot lately because it’s beginning to send out more flares and solar storms. Its recent turmoil is particularly newsworthy because the Sun was very quiet for an unusually long time. Astronomers had a tough time ex…
Dark energy is a mysterious force that pervades all space, acting as a “push” to accelerate the Universe’s expansion. Despite being 70 percent of the Universe, dark energy was only discovered in 1998 by two teams observing Type Ia supernovae. A Type…
During a total eclipse of the Sun, skywatchers are awed by the shimmering corona — a faint glow that surrounds the Sun like gossamer flower petals. This outer layer of the Sun’s atmosphere is, paradoxically, hotter than the Sun’s surface, but so …
In an exciting example of international collaboration, a Qatar astronomer teamed with scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and other institutions to discover a new alien world. This “hot Jupiter,” now named Qatar…
In December 2009, astronomers announced the discovery of a super-Earth known as GJ 1214b. At the time, they reported signs that the newfound world likely had a thick, gaseous atmosphere. Now, a team led by Jacob Bean (Harvard-Smithsonian Center …
NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has unveiled a previously unseen structure centered in the Milky Way — a finding likened in terms of scale to the discovery of a new continent on Earth. The feature, which spans 50,000 light-years, may be …
