A cosmic explosion seen last February may have been the tip of an iceberg” showing that powerful, distant gamma ray bursts are outnumbered ten-to-one by less-energetic cousins, according to an international team of astronomers.
New Insight on How Massive Stars Form
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope have discovered key evidence that may help them figure out how very massive stars can form.
Supermagnetic Neutron Star Surprises Scientists
Astronomers using radio telescopes from around the world have discovered a spinning neutron star with a superpowerful magnetic field — called a magnetar — doing things no magnetar has been seen to do before.
GBT Hunts for Chemical Precursors to Life
In just two years of work, an international research team has discovered eight new complex, biologically-significant molecules in interstellar space using the National Science Foundation’s Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) in West Virginia.
‘Special Case’ Stellar Blast
A powerful thermonuclear explosion on a dense white-dwarf star last February has given astronomers their best look yet at the early stages of such explosions, called novae, and also is giving them tantalizing new clues about the workings of bigger explosions, called supernovae, that are used to measure the Universe.
VLBA Reveals Closest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes
Astronomers using the National Science Foundation’s Very Long Baseline Array radio telescope have found the closest pair of supermassive black holes ever discovered in the Universe — a duo of monsters that together are more than 150 million times more massive than the Sun and closer together than the Earth and the bright star Vega.