Supernovas

Astronomers are preparing for a new era of big-data astronomy, and results are already starting to arrive.

Microscopic crystals extracted from meteorites could help settle a debate about the birth of our patch of the Milky Way.

Today’s observatories document every pulse and flash in the sky each night. To understand how the cosmos has changed over longer periods, scientists rely on a more tactile technology.

As measurements of distant stars and galaxies become more precise, cosmologists are struggling to make sense of sparring values.

Astronomers thought they had solved the mystery of gamma-ray bursts. A few recent events suggest otherwise.

Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter.

Type Ia supernovas are astronomers’ best tools for measuring cosmic distances. In a first, researchers have managed to re-create one on a supercomputer, giving a boost to a leading hypothesis for how they form.

These ultrabright flashes have recently been tracked for days, upending ideas about the cataclysms that create them.

A supernova-like explosion dubbed the Camel appears to be the result of a newborn black hole eating a star from the inside out.