There is a new candidate for coldest known star: a brown dwarf with about the same temperature as a hot cup of coffee. That’s cool enough to begin crossing the blurry line between small c...

Galaxies are sometimes found in large clusters with many hundreds of members. Typically there is a giant elliptical galaxy near the center; most of these ellipticals are very bright emi...

Over 170 molecules have been detected in space, from simple diatomic molecules like CO to complex organic molecules with over 70 atoms, like fullerene. These molecules play a critical rol...

This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151, dubbed the "Eye of Sauron" by astronomers for its similarity to the eye of the malevolent character in "The Lo...

A hot Jupiter - a type of celestial object unknown only fifteen years ago - is a Jupiter-sized exoplanet orbiting so close to its host star that its atmospheric temperature is thought to ...

Cambridge, MA 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...

The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest large galaxy to our Milky Way. Like the Milky Way, it has a spiral-arm structure with a massive black hole at its nucleus. Unlike the Milky Way, howe...

Arp 220 is the closest galaxy to the Milly Way with an extreme luminosity, defined as being more than about 300 times that of our own galaxy. Some dramatic galaxies have values of luminos...

Cambridge, MA The search for planets outside our solar system continues to heat up. NASA's Kepler spacecraft has located more than 1,200 planetary candidates, however confirming them rem...

About 435 stars have so far been confirmed to have planets orbiting them. Until recently, only about fifty of these stars were known to host more than one planet, but the Kepler satellit...