The mysterious X-ray emissions from the Helix Nebula’s central white dwarf, detected over four decades, may be the result of planetary debris accretion, according to new observations by Chandra and XMM-Newton.
A new search of NASA's Kepler space telescope archive has uncovered a vampire star system undergoing super-outburst. Crafted to search for exoplanets, the spacecraft sometimes spots other objects that brighten or dim. The newly-discovered star system consists of…
Oxford University scientists have detected incredibly rapid gas flares from a dwarf binary star system. This is the first sighting of such activity and it suggests that our current understanding of star habits and their capabilities is incomplete. The rapid flares,…
On January 21, 2014, astronomers around the world witnessed a supernova soon after it exploded in the Messier 82, or M82, galaxy. It is one of the closest supernovas discovered in decades. Telescopes across the globe and in space turned their at
