Astrophysics

With the confirmation of gravitational waves less than a decade old, scientists are barreling ahead with new detectors to pick up ever more elusive ripples in spacetime

The James Webb Space Telescope’s search for the earliest stars and black holes has yielded a very weird, very red, puzzle

Analyzing 1,504 supernovae into the distant universe, astronomers have shown the clearest evidence yet for cosmological time dilation as predicted by Einstein

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed an unusually large and highly luminous galaxy at a record-breaking 290 million years after the big bang

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

NASA’s head of heliophysics explains how we weathered the worst solar storm of a generation—and discusses the challenges we face in preparing for the next one

Cosmic Microwave Background Stage 4, a top-priority project for U.S. astrophysics, was designed to make breakthrough observations of the universe’s very earliest moments. Now the U.S. government says it can’t currently support the project’s construction at the South Pole

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

The far side of the moon holds the keys to the future of radio astronomy. We must maintain its pristine silence to benefit everyone