Articles on Astrophysics

Displaying 21 - 40 of 285 articles

A runaway black hole leaving a streak of new stars in its wake. James Webb Space Telescope / van Dokkum et al.

New fear unlocked: runaway black holes

Astronomers have spotted runaway black holes screaming through space, leaving trails of stars in in their wake.
Spiral galaxies, like Messier 77 shown here, helped astronomers learn about the existence of dark matter. NASA, ESA & A. van der Hoeven

How are dark matter and antimatter different?

Normal matter – which makes up everything we see and touch – isn’t the only type of matter present in the universe.
In a few billion years, the Milky Way and Andromeda, the nearest spiral galaxy, might collide. Future observers could be treated to fantastic views. NASA; ESA; Z. Levay and R. van der Marel, STScI; T. Hallas; and A. Mellinger

How will the universe end?

Will the universe keep existing forever? An astrophysicist explains how scientists aren’t entirely sure, but they can make predictions.
A simulation of a set of synthetic galaxies. Photons are sampled from these galaxies and have been simulated through the Earth’s atmosphere, a telescope and a sensor using a code called PhoSim. John Peterson/Purdue

Astronomy has a major data problem – simulating realistic images of the sky can help train algorithms

To make a truly realistic fake picture of a galaxy, you can model exactly how light particles travel through the atmosphere and telescope to reach its sensor.

Top contributors

More