light sources
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Bask in the Ethereal Beauty of These Artistic Astronomy Photographs
These gorgeous images of the sky are shortlisted in Royal Observatory Greenwich’s annual Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition
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Dead Sunspot Explosion Spits Plasma Toward Earth
The Sun just hurled debris from a dead sunspot toward Earth, and the superheated material is supposed to arrive at our planet on Thursday (don’t worry — you won’t feel it).
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Earth Is Surrounded by a 1,000-Light-Year-Wide Bubble That Cooks Up Stars
A team of astronomers has reconstructed the history of our local universe to understand the origin of the nearest stars. In a study published today in Nature, they describe an amorphous, 1,000-light-year-wide bubble ensconcing Earth that is responsible for those stars.
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This Earth-Sized Star Rotates Once Every 25 Seconds
Astronomers announced this week the discovery of the fastest-rotating white dwarf star on record, with a spin rate of once every 25 seconds. The star is about the size of Earth but, by the team’s measurements, contains least 200,000 times more mass, making the dense little object a spinning freak of nature.