If you want to study the stars, there’s no better place to start than close to home. After all, the nearest star is just 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) away: the Sun. Its daily presence and predictable motions through the sky may make it seem like a boring, steady companion. But up close, it’s an
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Space oddities may help reveal dark matter and other secrets in the Milky Way. Astronomer Warren Brown explains. In April, the European Space Agency released the second massive trove of data from Gaia, a spinning, scanning satellite that for nearly five years has been spying on a billion stars. Its goal is to produce a
Unbound and Out: Boosted by black holes, stars speed off, leaving clues behind Read More »
Just as earthquakes help scientists learn about the interior of our planet, the way a star’s surface oscillates yields clues to its internal structure and other key characteristics. Researchers with the Kepler Asteroseismic Investigation are putting that concept to work on a grand scale, monitoring the surface vibrations of thousands of stars to learn their ages,
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