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An artist's depiction of TOI 1338 b, the first circumbinary exoplanet discovered in data taken by NASA's TESS mission.

High school student discovers alien planet with twin suns just days into a NASA internship

By Doris Elin Urrutia

A high school junior found a distant planet that orbits two stars, one of just a dozen such worlds known to scientists.

An image captured by the ASTERIA spacecraft, with the stars of Orion's belt in the lower left corner.

How the tiny exoplanet-hunting ASTERIA satellite showed scientists what cubesats can do

By Meghan Bartels

A tiny satellite studying alien worlds may be gone for good, but during the two years the spacecraft operated, it laid the foundation for what may become a new way of finding exoplanets.

Pictures from Space! Our Image of the Day

By Space.com Staff

An Ariane 5 rocket rises between the silhouettes of two palm trees as it lifts off into the cloud-covered evening sky in Kourou, French Guiana.

This aurora was captured on camera from the International Space Station on June of 2017.

Violent solar storms are happening closer to Earth than anyone thought was possible

By Yasemin Saplakoglu

The spectacular solar storms that paint the polar skies in beautiful greens and pinks have a darker side

Artist's illustration on NASA's 2020 Mars rover on the Red Planet.

What will NASA's Mars 2020 rover be called? There's 155 names on the shortlist.

By Mike Wall

The competition to name NASA's next Mars rover has entered a new phase, with the space agency culling the field from 28,000 down to 155.

This image from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) shows part of the southern sky, including the location of ν Indi (blue circle), the plane of the Milky Way (bottom left) and the southern ecliptic pole (top).

Milky Way's cannibalistic past illuminated by ancient star's life story

By Elizabeth Howell

A planet-hunting telescope recently made a new discovery about the Milky Way's past cannibalism.

Venus’ atmosphere traps heat from the Sun as an extreme version of the greenhouse effect that warms Earth. The temperature on Venus are hot enough to melt lead.

Venus: The hot, hellish & volcanic planet

By Charles Q. Choi

Venus is the brightest planet in our solar system, has a hellish atmosphere, and is covered in volcanoes. Learn more about planet Venus here.

The Himawari-8 satellite captured an image of the Philippines during the aftermath of Taal volcano eruption on Jan. 12, showing the ash plumes that extended 9 miles (14 kilometers) into the air.

Huge Philippines volcano eruption blasts ash 9 miles up as satellites watch (video)

By Samantha Mathewson

The Taal volcano eruption in the Philippines this week sent ash plumes 9 miles (14 kilometers) into the air, new satellite imagery shows.

A composite image shows infrared light from swirls of gas and dust at the center of the Milky Way.

This super-sharp image could help explain the Milky Way's strange creamy center

By Rafi Letzter

What's going on in the middle of our galaxy?

A graphic produced by NASA shows how 2019 temperatures compare with historical averages.

2019 was the second hottest year on record, NASA says

By Meghan Bartels

It's the award no one wanted to win: 2019 was the second hottest year on record, government scientists confirmed yesterday (Jan. 15).

An artist's depiction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Controversy over giant telescope roils astronomy conference in Hawaii

By Meghan Bartels

Heated conversations at the American Astronomical Society's January meeting are usually about stars and galaxies, distant worlds and elaborate calculations.

An artist's depiction of a dwarf galaxy with a massive black hole highlighted.

Why are black holes just 'wandering' on the outskirts of their dwarf galaxies?

By Samantha Mathewson

Several supermassive black holes have been found wandering through their dwarf host galaxies, offering new clues about how similar black holes evolved in the early universe.

This artist’s impression shows two galaxies in the early universe. The brilliant explosion on the left is a gamma-ray burst. The light from the burst travels through both galaxies on its way to Earth (outside the frame to the right).

What Is a Gamma-Ray Burst?

By Adam Mann

A supreme blast of energy.

The Crab Nebula was once mistaken for a comet by French astronomer Charles Messier. This new multiwavelength image of the Crab Nebula combines X-ray light from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (in blue) with visible light from the Hubble Space Telescope (in yellow) and infrared light seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope (in red).

Tour the colorful Crab Nebula with this stunning new 3D visualization

By Doris Elin Urrutia

A new 3D movie highlights the Crab Nebula, beginning with its location in the constellation Taurus and zooming in to show off its dynamic features.

This illustration shows the six strange objects (dubbed G1 through G6) that astronomers detected swirling around our galaxy's central black hole. The mysterious blobs orbit the hole every 100 to 1,000 years, stretching out as they approach.

The black hole at the center of the galaxy is forging a strange new kind of star

By Brandon Specktor

The black hole at the center of our galaxy is warping and combining stars into a strange new kind of object, astronomers say.

An image from a magnetohydrodynamic simulation by the Gamera project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory shows bursty flows (in red and brown) in the plasma sheet.

Scientists study plasma 'bubbles' in Earth's magnetic field with Gamera model named for Japanese monster

By Doris Elin Urrutia

Auroras and satellite function might be influenced by ''bubbles'' of plasma near the tail of Earth's magnetosphere.

Scientists have traced the journey of phosphorous, one of the essential building blocks for life as we know it on Earth, through space.

Astronomers just tracked the interstellar journey of one of life's building blocks through space

By Chelsea Gohd

Scientists have traced the journey of phosphorous, one of the essential building blocks for life as we know it on Earth, through space.

An artist’s illustration of the Proxima Centauri planetary system. Portrayed on the right is the newly discovered exoplanet candidate Proxima c, which orbits the red-dwarf host star once every 5.2 Earth years. The system also includes the smaller Proxima b, on the left, a confirmed world that was discovered in 2016.

Proxima Centauri, the sun's nearest neighbor, may host a 2nd alien planet. Meet Proxima c.

By Mike Wall

Astronomers have spotted another possible planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, which lies just 4.2 light-years from the sun.

This Hubble Space Telescope photograph features spiral galaxy UGC 2885 (Rubin's galaxy), located 232 million light-years away in the northern constellation Perseus. The brightest star in this picture belongs to the Milky Way and is located much closer to Earth than UGC 2885.

Giant 'Rubin's Galaxy' stars in stunning Hubble photo named for dark matter pioneer

By Doris Elin Urrutia

Two cosmic love birds lit the way to the discovery of dark matter, and a new Hubble image features a behemoth galaxy that played a part in the groundbreaking finding.

An artist's illustration of a plume from the red supergiant star Betelgeuse.

Bright star Betelgeuse might be harboring a deep, dark secret

By Adam Mann

A new model suggests that the star Betelgeuse committed an act of cannibalism.