Dying Star Unlocks Life Cycle Mystery

Telescope spots sound waves traveling through space

(NEWSER) - NASA has discovered a group of massive red stars that are actually humming to themselves. The planet-hunting Kepler space telescope recently spotted sound waves emanating from the stars, the Wall Street Journal reports. NASA recorded the tune, and played it recently at a press conference in Denmark. “It is a giant red concert,” says the astronomer who made the recording. “They have many different frequencies and overtones.” More»

Historic images reveal high-def surface, flares

(NEWSER) - NASA has released astounding new photos and videos of the sun for the first time revealing high definition, close-up views of the solar surface and exploding flares. The images were captured by the space telescope of the Solar Dynamics Observatory, and are providing historic new insight into sun mechanics, notes the Melbourne Herald Sun . More»

(NEWSER) - A monstrous black hole near the center of a distant galaxy is sucking up stars, gas and dust, and spitting out baby stars, NASA scientists have discovered. The black hole is 100 million times the mass of the sun, reports the Telegraph. It lies at the center of a galaxy 50 million light years away known as NGC-1097, and has been photographed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope in California. More»

15-mile-wide black hole is smallest ever found

(NEWSER) - Astronomers have spotted the smallest black hole ever discovered, Reuters reports. It is just 15 miles across—the size of a city—but still has a pull strong enough to "stretch your body into a strand of spaghetti," said a NASA researcher. The relative pipsqueak weighs about as much as four suns, while black holes often weigh billions of times more. More»

Google Sky will boot up computer-chair space exploration

(NEWSER) - Launching off of the success of Google Earth, Google launched a new program today allowing armchair astronomers to chuck the telescope and gaze at the heavens from their monitors. Google Sky will harness Hubble photos along with a database of information, and feature more than one million stars and 200 million galaxies, the BBC reports. More»