Stars | featured news

The Tatooine-like world about the size of Saturn is a frozen mass of rock and gas about 200 light years from Earth. NASA astronomers say it was discovered by the Kepler spacecraft launched in 2009. The desert planet of Tatooine is home to all manner of wonderful creatures — womp rats and banthas and jawas.

An international astronomy team reports the closest exploding star seen in four decades.

Clouds may make a world orbiting a nearby star suitable for life, reports an international astronomer team.

A huge ball of brightly burning gas drifting through a neighboring galaxy may be the heaviest star ever discovered - hundreds of times more massive than the sun, scientists said Wednesday after working out its weight for the first time.

Late in 2009 year we witnessed the largest explosion ever recorded: a super giant star two hundred times bigger than the sun utterly obliterated by runaway thermonuclear reactions triggered by gamma ray-driven antimatter production.

Astronomers have underestimated the number of galaxies in parts of the Universe by as much as 90 per cent, according to a study, suggesting billions of stars are yet to be recorded.

It took 13 billion years to reach Earth, but astronomers have seen the light of an exploding mega-star that is the most distant object ever detected, two studies published Thursday reported.

Completing an orbit in less than an Earth day, planet Wasp-18b should have burned up, according to accepted theory. Scientists have discovered a planet that shouldn't exist. The finding, they say, could alter our understanding of orbital dynamics, a field considered pretty well settled since the time of astronomer Johannes Kepler 400 years ago.

It may not be possible to travel back in time, but seeing stars and galaxies as they looked millions or even billions of years ago is no problem thanks to telescopes, the closest thing we have to time machines.

A distant "sun" residing in the constellation Aquila has become the smallest star known to host a planet.