Milky Way

Andromeda and the Milky Way may collide, or they may safely swing past each other. Time will tell

A new explanation for the Wow! signal suggests it was a chance detection of a furious flare crashing into a hydrogen cloud. But some researchers doubt that this idea has truly cracked the case

There’s more than one way for a star to die. Some go with a whimper, and some go with a very, very big bang

It’s possible to see celestial objects during the day, but it’s not always easy

We can and should look harder for evidence of alien visitors to our solar system

The cosmos is dark. The Lilly-Madau diagram reveals that it will become much darker still

Cosmic happenstance and biological evolution come together to create a road map to the stars

The iconic star Polaris appears to be much younger than its true age. The secret: it’s eating another star

A supernova showering Earth with radioactive debris is a surprisingly common cosmic occurrence

For the first time, scientists observed matter’s free fall into a black hole’s “plunging region”

How do astronomers find the darkest objects in the universe?

An exploding star is a catastrophe on a cosmic scale, but here on Earth we’re safe from such astral disasters—for now