Efforts to study black holes in the lab with versions that trap sound instead of light may have revealed a key prediction made by Stephen Hawking

Astronomers got their best ever look at merging stars when a pair called V1309 Scorpii got together in 2008, but now they have gone into hiding

Most meteorites come from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but an extraterrestrial visitor that landed in 2000 may hail from further afield

Photographs and footage capture the annual Perseid meteor shower, which is more active than usual this year.

Over the next few evenings the annual Perseid meteor shower will be reaching its peak, and putting on a great show

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The galaxies in the early universe were much smaller than our Milky Way and churned out stars at a rapid pace. They grew larger through mergers with other dwarf galaxies to eventually build the magnificent spiral and elliptical galaxies we see around us today. But astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have looked at two small galaxies that were left off the star party list. For many billions of years Pisces A and Pisces B lived in a vast intergalactic wilderness that was devoid of gas, which fuels star formation. They got left out in the cold.

Observers say the annual astronomical event was marked with "spectacular fireballs" in the early hours of Friday.

Heating of Jupiter’s upper atmosphere above the Great Red Spot

Nature 536, 7615 (2016). doi:10.1038/nature18940

Authors: J. O’Donoghue, L. Moore, T. S. Stallard & H. Melin

The temperatures of giant-planet upper atmospheres at mid- to low latitudes are measured to be hundreds of degrees warmer than simulations based on solar heating alone can explain. Modelling studies that focus on additional sources of heating have been unable to resolve this major discrepancy. Equatorward transport of energy from the hot auroral regions was expected to heat the low latitudes, but models have demonstrated that auroral energy is trapped at high latitudes, a consequence of the strong Coriolis forces on rapidly rotating planets. Wave heating, driven from below, represents another potential source of upper-atmospheric heating, though initial calculations have proven inconclusive for Jupiter, largely owing to a lack of observational constraints on wave parameters. Here we report that the upper atmosphere above Jupiter’s Great Red Spot—the largest storm in the Solar System—is hundreds of degrees hotter than anywhere else on the planet. This hotspot, by process of elimination, must be heated from below, and this detection is therefore strong evidence for coupling between Jupiter’s lower and upper atmospheres, probably the result of upwardly propagating acoustic or gravity waves.

Astronomy: Gentle birth of a comet

Nature 536, 7615 (2016). doi:10.1038/536128a

The comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko (pictured), which has been orbited by the Rosetta spacecraft since 2014, might date back to the primordial Solar System billions of years ago.A team led by Björn Davidsson at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, used instruments on the European

A new-found object orbiting at extreme angles to the planets hints at new puzzle in the outer solar system - in addition to Planet Nine

The small smattering of bright blue stars in the upper left of this vast new 615 megapixel ESO image is the perfect cosmic laboratory in which to study the life and death of stars. Known as Messier 18 this star cluster contains stars that formed together from the same massive cloud of gas and dust. This image, which also features red clouds of glowing hydrogen and dark filaments of dust, was captured by the VLT Survey Telescope (VST) located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.

A search for a fourth kind of neutrino, a ghostly particle that could explain dark matter, has turned up empty

A new dimming signal makes the famous star even more challenging to explain, but astronomers aren’t claiming that it’s aliens… yet

Turning back the clock on Venus with computer simulations suggests it might have once looked like early Earth and even been hospitable to life

NASA's Cassini orbiter is preparing for its death dive into Saturn, leaving behind questions about whether its watery moon is inhabited. Here's how we'll answer them

Deep inside every galaxy is a tug of war between its forming stars and its voracious black hole, and its gas and mass that can make the difference