13-06-27 All stars begin their lives in groups. Most stars, including our Sun, are born in small, benign（良性的，亲切的） groups that quickly fall apart. Others form in huge, dense swarms that survive for billions of years as stellar clusters. Within such r...

13-06-06 If you had a time machine that could take you anywhere in the past, what time would you choose? Most people would probably pick the era of the dinosaurs in hopes of spotting a T. rex. But many astronomers would choose the period, four and a half bil...

13-05-20 Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint（模糊的） , and close to their stars. The two most prolific（丰富的） techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling摇晃的 stars) and tr...

13-04-27 A University of Washington astronomer is using Earth's interstellar（星际的） neighbors to learn the nature of certain stars too far away to be directly measured or observed, and the planets they may host. Characterization by proxy is the technique...

13-03-06 New theoretical modeling by Carnegie's Alan Boss provides clues to how the gas giant planets in our solar system -- Jupiter and Saturn -- might have formed and evolved. His work was published recently by the Astrophysical Journal. New stars are surr...

13-01-25 A University of Alberta professor has revealed the workings of a celestial（天空的） event involving binary stars（双子星） that results in an explosion so powerful it ranks close to Supernovae in luminosity（光度，光辉） . Astrophysicists have long...

13-01-18 Nearly 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, floats in space, in a long and slow dance around our galaxy. Vast clouds of gas within it slowly collapse to form new stars. In turn, these light...

12-12-29 Looking up at the stars, I know quite well 仰望群星的时分，我一清二楚， That, for all they care, I can go to hell, 尽管它们关怀备至，我亦有可能赴地府， But on earth indifference is the least 可是尘世间我们丝毫不必畏惧 We have to dread from man or be...

12-12-18 Imagine riding in an airplane as the plane is jolted back and forth by gusts of wind that you can't prove exist but are there nonetheless（尽管如此） . Similar turbulence exists in space, and a research team led by the University of Iowa reports to...

12-12-04 Scattered around the Milky Way are stars that resemble（类似） our own sun -- but a new study is finding that any planets orbiting those stars may very well be hotter and more dynamic than Earth. That's because the interiors of any terrestrial plane...