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Much glory in astronomy comes from probing the farthest reaches of the universe for the most exotic beasts. But poking around closer to home for more prosaic objects has its [...]

Brown dwarfs are not massive enough to be stars, nor are they planets in the traditional sense. They are often found in isolation but may also be companions to stars. [...]

The Hague, Netherlands, last month welcomed 2000 astronomers from around the world for the 22nd General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). From 15 to 27 August, they participated [...]

The Hague--You wouldn't want to get too close to a quasar, but astronomers would love to get a better view of these enigmatic beasts. Seen only in the farthest reaches [...]

In galaxies, red is a sign of maturity. Young galaxies blaze with hot, short-lived blue stars, but after a galaxy has been around for a few billion years, those stars [...]

Bombay And Pune, India - Sprouting from the arid plain some 80 kilometers north of Pune in northwestern India is a patch of giant steel toadstools. There were a dozen [...]

It's not easy to make a millisecond pulsar. First, you have to crush a star into a ball of neutrons just a few kilometers across and set this neutron star [...]

Ever since they were discovered 30 years ago, quasars have been an enigma. Shining like beacons from the very edges of the universe, they emit such an astounding amount of [...]

Our galaxy's graceful spiral form seems the very picture of serenity. For decades, astronomers have thought it had a history to match: an uneventful progression from a primordial gas cloud [...]

Quasars should be hard to miss. These mysterious objects, which dwell in the far reaches of the cosmos, pour out as much energy as hundreds of ordinary galaxies combined. But [...]

Any cook knows that while a recipe may be mouth-watering to read, the dish itself won't necessarily turn out well. Now cosmologists are facing the same gap between theory and [...]

Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 is now homing in on jupiter, and many eyes are trained on it in anticipation of a collision in July. The comet initially caught astronomers' eyes for [...]

In the pages of Mademoiselle and Cosmo, there's an eternal debate about whether bigger really is better. Some say yes, some no. But when it comes to telescopes, there's no [...]

The conventional picture of a quasar is more than enough to strain credibility. A black hole as massive as millions of suns lurks at the center of a galaxy, sucking [...]

Even in this age of space telescopes and giant mountaintop observatories, astronomy can still reward amateurs. Francisco Garcia, a star-gazer in Lugo, Spain, proved it once more when, on the [...]

A swarm of stars seen through a small gap in the dust and gas that shrouds the galaxy's central bulge may have set a cosmic record. If so, a mystery [...]

Black holes once lived only in the minds of theoretical physicists and science fiction writers. Now they seem to be everywhere. It's all but certain that gigantic black holes, packing [...]

Discusses comets' experiences of brief flare-ups of activity. Persistent comae for the Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 (SW1) comet; Detection of radio emission from carbon monoxide (CO) molecules in SW1; Puzzling activity of distant comets due to sublimation of molecules more volatile than water.

Reports on the observations made on a supernova on April 1, 1994. Brightness in the Whirlpool galaxy, M51; Preliminary diagnosis; Spotting of an explosion of a massive star; Effect of the structure of the progenitor star on the course of the explosion; Detection of radio signals from the explosion; Detection of ultraviolet emission by the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite.