One of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way almost got away with theft. However, new simulations convicted the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) of stealing stars from its neighbor, the Small Magellanic ...

Astronomers have, for the first time, found a planet orbiting a binary star system using microlensing. Gravitational lensing is a technique that made its name by aiding in the discovery of galaxies.

Once found, the microlensing measurements would help in determining a number of properties, such as the planet’s mass and distance, how it sits in relation to its star, and its galactic position. In ...

Gravitational microlensing is a transient but powerful phenomenon that occurs when a foreground mass – such as a star or a planetary system – temporarily magnifies the light from a more distant ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii have made independent confirmations of an exoplanet orbiting far from its central star. The planet was discovered through a ...

In exoplanet hunting today, there seems to be one burning question that nearly every new article published asks: Where did these planets come from? Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited ...

Astrophysicists have discovered for the first time a population of planets beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Using microlensing -- an astronomical phenomenon and the only known method capable of ...

For the first time ever, astronomers have seen a distant star warp the light of another star, making it seem as though the object changed its position in the sky. It’s a huge discovery — since even ...

The abundance of low-mass compact objects, at or below the hydrogen-burning mass limit of 0.08M ⊙ (where M ⊙ is the solar mass), remains an open question. This abundance has implications for such ...

Scientists have discovered a new planet with the mass of Earth, orbiting its star at the same distance that we orbit our sun. The planet is likely far too cold to be habitable for life as we know it, ...

Some galaxies pump out vast amounts of energy from a very small volume of space, typically not much bigger than our own solar system. The cores of these galaxies, so called Active Galactic Nuclei or ...