Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering News

The discovery of 13 diffuse interstellar bands with the longest wavelengths to date could someday solve a 90-year-old mystery. Astronomers have identified the new bands using data collected by the Gemini North telescope of stars in the center of the Milky

A team of scientists has used the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to observe a quasar accretion disc -- a brightly glowing disc of matter that is slowly being sucked into its galaxy's central black hole

In the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, astronomers have hunted for radio signals and ultra-short laser pulses. In a new paper, Avi Loeb (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) and Edwin Turner (Princeton University) suggest a new technique

Fat doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that obscure about half of supermassive black holes could be the result of high speed crashes between planets and asteroids, according to a new theory from an international team of astronomers

he European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has revealed asteroid Lutetia to be a primitive body, left over as the planets were forming in our Solar System.

Astronomers report in the journal Nature that organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the Universe. The results suggest that complex organic compounds are not the sole domain of life but can be made naturally by stars.

Three planets -- each orbiting its own giant, dying star -- have been discovered by an international research team led by a Penn State University astronomer

A new study has shown how mixing of elements occurs during a nova explosion, thus solving an enigma that has puzzled stellar astrophysicists for over half a century

Mysterious "blue stragglers" are old stars that appear younger than they should be: they burn hot and blue. Several theories have attempted to explain why they don't show their age, but, until now, scientists have lacked the crucial observations with whic

The photo of a nearby star and its orbiting companion -- whose temperature is like a hot summer day in Arizona -- will be presented by Penn State Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Kevin Luhman during the Signposts of Planets conference at