An Alternative to Planet 9: Maybe There Is Nothing Special
Astrobites explores whether Planet 9 is really the most likely scenario to explain the aligned orbits of observed distant solar-system bodies.
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Featured Image: On the Cosmic Web and Slime Mold
These beautiful images show what happens when you use slime mold growth patterns to model the cosmic web.
Challenging a Plasma Assumption
A recent study calls into question a fundamental assumption used to model space plasmas.
Spins Point to How Black Hole Binaries Formed
A new study uses clues from black hole spins to explore how binary black holes came to be paired together in the first place.
Double-Peak and Destroy: Accretion in a Tidal Disruption Event Reveals Itself
Astrobites reports on the first confident detection of an accretion disk that formed after a supermassive black hole tore apart a hapless star.
Searching Pulsars for Planets
A new study explores whether there are any exoplanets orbiting the well-observed NANOGrav pulsars.
A Stellar Method of Catalog Creation
Getting star catalogs out of telescope images is a tricky affair. But a recent technique promises improvements on existing catalogs, and it could be widely applicable as large-scale astronomical surveys begin.
Rescuing an Overlooked Planet
Sometimes real exoplanet detections are accidentally discarded by the automated vetting pipeline. One such error was just discovered: a habitable-zone Earth-like planet candidate.
How to Grow a Giant Galaxy
Astrobites reports on how the universe can grow a giant galaxy by a redshift of z ~ 2.
Featured Image: Formation of the First Binaries
When primordial gas clouds collapse and fragment in the early universe, the resulting massive stars may form with friends.
Pulsar Discovery from an Enormous Telescope
Pulsars in distant globular clusters are a challenge to detect — but it’s a job made easier by the world’s largest filled-aperture radio telescope.
Observations of Betelgeuse’s Dimming from the Stratosphere
An airplane-borne telescope is being used to learn more about why the red supergiant Betelgeuse suddenly dimmed in recent months.