Washington, DC We tend to think of the North Star, Polaris, as a steady, solitary point of light that guided sailors in ages past. But there is more to the North Star than meets the eye ...

Washington, DC By a score of 135 to zero, scientists using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer have compared suspected neutron stars and black holes and found that the black holes behaved...

Cambridge, MA Mercury is boiling. Mars is freezing. The Earth is just right. When it comes to the temperatures of the planets, it makes sense that they should get colder the farther away...

Cambridge, MA The Perseus spiral arm - the nearest spiral arm in the Milky Way outside the Sun's orbit - lies only half as far from Earth as some previous studies had suggested. An inter...

Cambridge, MA The signs of the holidays are all around us - wreaths on doors, twinkling lights in windows, and decorated trees in living rooms. Even outer space is joining the year-end c...

Cambridge, MA A team of astronomers has found faint visible echoes of three ancient supernovae by detecting their centuries-old light as it is reflected by clouds of interstellar gas hun...

Cambridge, MA Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a remarkably small brown dwarf surrounded by a dusty disk. The brown dwarf contains only about 8 times the ...

Cambridge, MA A ring often serves as the visible symbol of the unseen - be it mystical, Lord of the Rings-style power or the devotion between two people. In space, a ring of light is mor...

Cambridge, MA Just in time for Thanksgiving, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has harvested a bounty of young stars. A new infrared image of the reflection nebula NGC 1333, located about 1...

Cambridge, MA A new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveals billowing mountains of dust ablaze with the fires of stellar youth. Captured by Spitzer's infrared eyes, the majest...