The latest headlines from around the cosmos.

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Numbers with a human touch

Image by Leo Reynolds/Flickr

Thoughts from a Planetarian: Visualizing Numbers

On a two-ful Tuesday, our planetarian discusses how visualizations can make numbers more understandable.

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brown dwarf

This artist’s concept shows a brown dwarf with clouds, much like you might expect to find on a giant planet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (IPAC)

Star or Planet? Both or Neither?

I can’t help imagining brown dwarfs as having an identity crisis. And two announcements today did not help them.

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Supermassive black hole

An artist’s impression of a supermassive black hole, the likes of which fuels extreme jets of material visible from millions of light years away. (Image courtesy DESY, Science Communication Lab.)

Black Holes Big and Small—and In Between

How are astronomers learning about black hole formation—and discovering more strange objects in the process?

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ALMA Observations: Moon Formation and Stellar Nurseries

Nestled high in Chile’s mountains, the ALMA telescope is making startling new discoveries.

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bubbles in space

Artist’s illustration of the Local Bubble with star formation occurring on the bubble’s surface. Scientists have now shown how a chain of events beginning 14 million years ago with a set of powerful supernovae led to the creation of the vast bubble, responsible for the formation of all young stars within 500 light years of the Sun. (Image courtesy STScI and Leah Hustak.)

Living in a Bubble

It turns out that the Sun lives in a bubble—1,000 light years across!

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MaNGA Mosaic

An image of the Whirlpool galaxy (M51); an iconic nearby galaxy, made using a Mosaic of images of one thousand galaxies, ten percent of the entire in the MaNGA sample. (Image courtesy Karen Masters and the SDSS collaboration.)

Mapping the Cosmos

How are astronomers planning to map our universe with the help of robots?

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42 of the largest objects in the asteroid belt
Our Last Observation

We end our series with news from the Vera Rubin Observatory, ALMA, and the VLT.

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Illustration showing the asteroid 2021 PH27 inside Mercury’s orbit

Illustration: CTIO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/J. da Silva

Opportunistic Observations

Telescopes in Chile are finding hidden treasures such as nearby asteroids and potentially habitable exoplanets.

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exoplanet

This illustration depicts a planet partially hidden in the glare of its host star and a nearby companion star.

Chilean Observations: Exoplanets

What are telescopes on our planet revealing about planets in other parts of our galaxy?

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The Dark Energy Survey, Molecules, and Fossil Atmospheres

New discoveries from Chilean telescopes offer information about dark matter and molecules in strange places.

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Observations: A Pristine Comet and Huge Flare

An update on two new Chilean telescopes plus ALMA observes a rogue comet and a life-threatening flare.

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Juna Kollmeier on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey

From black holes to small galaxies, Dr. Juna Kollmeier takes us through some of the best discoveries of SDSS.

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Observations: Observing for minutes or hours

Two new discoveries in astronomy show that observations can take less than a coffee break or over several days.

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Luisa Rebull on the Treasures in NASA Data

The data in NASAs archives is incredibly useful to scientists and teachers, even today!

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