Astronomers have uncovered a pair of giant planets that are lighter than cotton candy – super-puffs the size of Jupiter. The featherweight pair – orbiting a star 1,110 light-years away – are the biggest exoplanets found to have less density than cotton candy. That makes them the lightest known planets of their size, said the […]
astronomers
Astronomers witness birth of a solar system
Astronomers have observed the earliest stage of planet formation around a distant young star — for the first time ever. The baby star, called HOPS-315, is located about 1,300 light years away in the Orion Nebula and is similar to what our Sun looked like in its early years. Planets form in discs of gas […]
Astronomers spot distant dwarf planet with 25,000-year orbit far beyond Pluto
Astronomers have discovered a new dwarf planet, named 2017 OF201, far beyond Pluto’s orbit. It takes 25,000 years to orbit the sun—much longer than Pluto’s 248 years. This makes it one of the most distant objects ever found in our solar system, over 1,600 times farther from the sun than Earth at its farthest point. […]
Catch the first solar eclipse of 2025 today: A rare celestial event
The first solar eclipse of 2025 will take place today, March 29. The event will begin at 1:51 pm and end at 5:44 pm Pakistan Standard Time. However, it will not be visible from Pakistan, according to the Pakistan Meteorological Department. The eclipse will be seen in certain parts of Europe, West Africa, North America, […]
What if an asteroid was about to hit Earth? Scientists ponder question
Here’s a hypothetical: a telescope detects an asteroid between 100 and 300 meters in diameter racing through our solar system at 14 kilometers per second, 57 million kilometers from Earth. Astronomers estimate a one percent risk the space rock will collide with our planet on April 27, 2027. What should we do? It’s this potentially […]
The real deal: astronomers deliver first photo of black hole
Astronomers on Wednesday unveiled the first photo of a black hole, one of the star-devouring monsters scattered throughout the Universe and obscured by impenetrable shields of gravity. The image of a dark core encircled by a flame-orange halo of white-hot plasma looks like any number of artists’ renderings over the last 30 years. But this […]