Ker Than

Millions of years before the Bible's tale of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, a brown dwarf emerged intact after being engulfed by a neighboring red giant, scientists say.

Near infrared images taken by the Keck II telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii show that Red Spot Jr. is much darker than its larger counterpart.

An enormous amoeba-like structure 200 million light-years wide and made up of galaxies and large bubbles of gas is the largest known object in the universe, scientists say.

A new study suggests that the mechanism behind the intense X-ray emissions generated by spinning stellar corpses known as pulsars needs revising.

Newly detected dust found around the burst remains of a dead star could help reveal how planets and stars formed and how life began.

In February this year, a typically faint star located only a few thousand light-years away flared suddenly and beamed so brightly that it was visible to the naked eye for a few days.

The main camera aboard the Hubble Space Telescope will switch to a backup power source to correct an electronics problem that has prevented it from operating normally since Monday.

A huge "double-eye" atmospheric vortex has been confirmed to exist at the South Pole of the planet Venus.

The International Astronomical Union has officially christened Pluto's two newest satellites Nix and Hydra.

Contrary to what you might think, a black hole's gravitational tug isn't strong enough to send matter falling into its center. It's magnetism that provides the final nudge inwards, a new study finds.

Three new rocky bodies have been detected in the same orbit as Neptune, bringing the total number of the gas giant's asteroid companions, or "Trojans," up to four.

Astronomers have uncovered a frenzy of star forming activity in the dusty cores of two merging galaxies 250 million light-years away.

Scientists have detected large amounts of carbon gas in the newly forming solar system around Beta Pictoris, a young and well-studied star located some 60 light-years away.

A flurry of new images from ground and space telescopes are refining astronomers' ideas about our galactic neighbor Andromeda.

Astronomers on Earth will have ringside seats to a face-off between two of the biggest storms in the solar system.

A rock carving discovered in Arizona might depict an ancient star explosion seen by Native Americans one thousand years ago, scientists announced today.

Three medium-sized planets of roughly the same mass as Neptune have been discovered around a nearby Sun-like star that contains an asteroid belt.

An astronomical anomaly could be explained by a new theory that proposes the universe came into existence not just once, but many times in endless cycles of death and rebirth.