Besides being a point of light, a star is a luminous, spherical mass of plasma, enough to hold itself together under its own gravity. On its own, though, gravitational rounding isn't enough. What ...

For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very first stars in the universe were like. These stars formed new chemical elements, which enriched the universe and allowed the next generations of ...

Learn how the discovery of a young planet orbiting two suns is revealing how worlds form and survive in binary star systems.

Stars form in massive clouds of gas called molecular clouds. As they form, they accrete gas from these clouds, and as the stars rotate, gas and dust accumulates in a rotating disk around the star ...

Astronomers have identified a rare type of binary star system containing a rapidly spinning millisecond pulsar and a helium star companion, formed via common envelope evolution. Although such systems ...

This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. For decades, astronomers have wondered what the very ...

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.) Luke Keller, Ithaca College (THE CONVERSATION) For decades, astronomers have wondered ...