Sharpest map ever made of a galaxy’s dark matter

Galaxies come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. They can be broadly classified as spiral, elliptical or irregular, but each of these still leaves plenty of scope for variety. Take, for instance, the s

f you’ve ever read anything about cosmology, you’ll have come across an astonishing statistic: all the matter around us, everything we see and touch, every star and gas cloud and planet, makes up just

On 23 July 1999, Space Shuttle Columbia launched its heaviest-ever payload: the Chandra X-ray Observatory, a new flagship telescope for NASA. It is the world’s most powerful X-ray telescope, capable o

I’m responding to an article by Pete Lawrence in the April 2025 issue, titled ‘Flora crosses the Leo Triplet’ (Big Three, in the Sky Guide), which spurred me to have a look for this minor planet. I al

The best discoveries, inventions and surprises

Neutron stars can suffer quakes far more powerful than anything on Earth