StarDate

A Little Red Dot might have a big black hole in its heart. And that’s a bit of a challenge to explain.

Little Red Dots are galaxies from the first 1.5 billion years of the universe. The name comes from their appearance – they’re small and red, but they’re especially bright. They don’t appear to have enough stars to make them so bright. So a good bit of their “shininess” could come from gian...

With the autumn harvest safely stowed away, many people in bygone centuries turned their attention to hunting. And just as the Harvest Moon helped them bring in the crops, the Hunter’s Moon helped them find game. The moonlight made it easier to track animals through the empty fields and beyond.

Although most present-day Americans don’t have to worry about storing food for the winter, we still keep the names for those fu...

In 1908, a space rock the size of a small office building exploded above Siberia, flattening hundreds of square miles of forest. In 1975, several “fireballs” blazed across the night, and instruments on the Moon recorded several impacts. And 30 years later, scientists saw an impact on the Moon.

These events might all be related to the Taurid meteor shower, which is underway now. The shower is created by two objects ̵...

The Taurid meteor shower has a double identity. It’s split into two different streams, which peak a few nights apart in early November. Neither stream is particularly impressive, but things pick up when they overlap.

Their story begins thousands of years ago, with the breakup of a big ball of ice and dust – Comet Encke. The biggest remaining chunk kept that name. But the breakup created several other big pieces, plus cl...

AUDIO: We have contact. We have initial contact – initial contact of the Soyuz capsule with the Expedition 1 crew to the International Space Station.

A key milestone in the human exploration of space took place 25 years ago tomorrow. The first permanent crew took up residence in the International Space Station. And people have been living on the station ever since.

The...

Like other buildings, observatory domes can outlive their usefulness. They may not be big enough for the latest telescopes. The light from encroaching cities can make it hard for them to see the heavens. Or time may just catch up to them.

Many domes and related buildings have been torn down. Others have been converted into offices or libraries. And still others have been abandoned – left to the elements and the ravages of tim...

The night sky is filled with monsters. And none are more fearsome than the Gorgons – three sisters who were so hideous that a single glance at them turned the observer to stone. One of them was beheaded by Perseus the hero. His constellation shows him holding the head, which is outlined by four stars – the Gorgons.

In mythology, two of the sisters were immortal. But the third, Medusa, was not. Perseus managed to lop off...

A young “cotton-candy” planet is hastening its own demise. As it dips close to its star, it appears to trigger giant explosions that erode the planet’s atmosphere.

The planet orbits HIP 67522, a star roughly 400 light-years from Earth. The star is a little bigger and heavier than the Sun, but less than one percent the Sun’s age. Such young stars generate strong magnetic fields. Lines of magnetic force tangle...

A visitor from far beyond the solar system is getting better acquainted with the Sun this week. Tomorrow, it’ll make its closest approach to the Sun – just 126 million miles. After that, it’ll head back toward interstellar space.

The visitor is 3I/ATLAS. It was discovered on July 1st by an automated telescope that looks for comets and asteroids. Calculations of its orbit quickly showed that it came from outside th...