In 1932, the Dutch astronomer Jan Oort tallied the stars in the Milky Way and found that they came up short. Judging by the way the stars bob up and down like horses on a carousel as they go around ...

While analysing the complex structure of the Milky Way, an international team of astronomers from Italy and the United Kingdom has recently derived the shape of the Galactic outer stellar disc, and ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. There’s more to the Milky Way than meets the eye. The silvery ...

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Beyond the spiral arms of our galaxy lies a giant halo of hot gas ...

For decades, astronomers have attempted to piece together the mystery of how galaxies, stars and planets formed from an empty universe. They recently stumbled upon a gargantuan system that formed just ...

When looking it galaxies, it takes little to realize that they come in different shapes- whether they're swirling blue disks like the Milky Way, red spheres, or misshapen, clumpy messes. But why is ...

A new supercomputer simulation of the planet and debris disk around the nearby star Beta Pictoris reveals that the planet's motion drives spiral waves throughout the disk, a phenomenon that causes ...

The oldest disk-shaped galaxy ever spotted formed just 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, a new study finds. That’s much earlier than astronomers thought that this type of galaxy could form.