I keep trying to see this supernova in the Pinwheel Galaxy. The darn moon is just too bright. Ethan at Starts With a Bang suggests waiting a week or so. I will try that. But what I find really cool ...

The VISTA telescope observed the Trifid Nebula, identifying previously hidden variable stars. These variable stars exhibit a period-luminosity relationship, meaning their intrinsic brightness is ...

This week on Looking Up guest host Caitlyn Voige illuminates a luminary by the name of Henrietta Swan Leavitt. When we look up into the night sky, stars look immeasurably small and distant, unchanging ...

Betelgeuse—a gigantic star in the final stages of its life—has been acting weird lately, exhibiting dramatic drops in brightness. New research attributes enormous star spots to Betelgeuse’s flaky ...

Quasars, the luminous beacons at the centers of distant galaxies, have puzzled astronomers for decades with their dramatic brightness variations. Recent observations suggest that these celestial ...

Hubble proved Andromeda is a separate galaxy by identifying a Cepheid variable star within it. Cepheid variables have a period-luminosity relationship: longer period means greater brightness. Knowing ...

Astronomers tracked a decade of dramatic changes in P13, a neutron star undergoing supercritical accretion. Its X-ray ...

A standard candle is an object whose luminosity, or brightness, is a known quantity. Standard candles are used by astronomers to estimate the distance of the candle itself, as well as nearby features, ...