Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and W. M. Keck Observatory have found a lopsided debris disk around a young star known as HD 15115. As seen from Earth, the edge-on disk resembles a needle sticking out from the star. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

A massive exploding faraway star _ the brightest supernova astronomers have ever seen _ has scientists wondering whether a similar celestial fireworks show may light up the sky much closer to Earth sometime soon. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

By studying in great detail the 'ringing' of a planet-harbouring star, a team of astronomers using ESO's 3.6-m telescope have shown that it must have drifted away from the metal-rich Hyades cluster. This discovery has implications for theories of star and planet formation, and for the dynamics of our Milky Way. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

An international team, led by astronomers at the University of Hertfordshire in the UK, have discovered one of the coolest sub-stellar bodies ever found outside our own solar system, orbiting the red dwarf star Wolf 940, some 40 light years from Earth. picked by AutumnLotus 11 months ago

University of Arizona astronomers who are probing the oxygen-rich environment around a supergiant star with one of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes have discovered a score of molecules that include compounds needed for life. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

For the first time, astronomers think that they've found evidence of an alien solar system around a star close enough to Earth to be visible to the naked eye. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

Astronomers have found the first signature of complex organic molecules in the dust cloud around a distant star, suggesting that these building blocks of life may be a common feature of planetary systems. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Astronomers are baffled after finding an exotic type of star called a pulsar apparently locked in an elongated orbit around a star much like the sun -- an arrangement defying what had been known about such objects. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Astronomers have spotted a small group of young stellar "siblings" in a dusty stellar nursery 848 light-years away. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

A large star in its death throes is leaving a huge, turbulent tail of oxygen, carbon and nitrogen in its wake that makes it look like an immense comet hurtling through space. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

They beamed him up -- and on Friday, after a three-week search, they found the rocket that had carried ashes of "Star Trek" actor James Doohan briefly into space.

Follow up on this story. picked by AutumnLotus 3 years ago

A team of astronomers have found the 'missing link' of stellar death, revealing what our Sun might look like at the end of its life. picked by AutumnLotus 7 months ago

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found a bizarre ring of material around the magnetic remains of a star that blasted to smithereens. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Using observations from ESO's VLT, astronomers were able for the first time to reconstruct the site of a flare on a solar-like star located 150 light years away. The study of this young star, nicknamed 'Speedy Mic' because of its fast rotation, will help scientists better understand the youth of our Sun. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

An enormous eruption has found its way to Earth after travelling for many thousands of years across space. Studying this blast with ESA’s XMM-Newton and Integral space observatories, astronomers have discovered a dead star belonging to a rare group: the magnetars. picked by AutumnLotus 9 months ago

The existence of massive stars — up to a whopping 120 times the mass of the sun — has long perplexed astronomers. The big question was how these stellar behemoths reached their enormous sizes without blowing off all the gas that feeds them.

A new computer simulation of star formation has found a surprisingly simple solution to how these stars might get around this problem. picked by AutumnLotus 1 year ago

Astronomers have spotted evidence of a second Earth being built around a distant star 424 light-years away. Using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted a huge belt of warm dust swirling around a young star called HD 113766 that is just slightly larger than our sun. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Astronomers have spotted a space oddity in Earth's neighbourhood - a dead star with some unusual characteristics. The object has been nicknamed Calvera, after the villain in the 1960s western film The Magnificent Seven. picked by misswinkle 3 years ago

An unusual star may have swallowed its stellar companion and burped out a planet-forming cloud as a result, a new study reports. The star, called BP Piscium, is surrounded by a thick disc of gas and dust from which it appears to be sucking up new material at a prodigious rate. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago

Probing a glowing bubble of gas and dust encircling a dying star, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals a wealth of previously unseen structures. The object, called NGC 2371, is a planetary nebula, the glowing remains of a Sun-like star. The remnant star visible at the center of NGC 2371 is the super-hot core of the former red giant, now stripped of its outer layers. picked by AutumnLotus 2 years ago