Let’s try a demonstration that we all enjoyed in elementary school. Close one eye, hold out your thumb at arm’s length, and align it with an object on the other side of the room. Without moving your ...

Scientists have developed a novel method to calculate the distances to stars, and it could be useful in helping map the size of galaxies. The study is published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal ...

Don't miss the big stories. Like us on Facebook. Astronomers quickly become used to dealing with huge numbers. For example, in any one lecture, I might declare that the sun emits some 400 billion ...

A reader from Jackson, Mo., asks, "How do astronomers know the distances to the various objects they talk about?" The answer is that astronomers use a "boot strap" process to determine distances over ...

Stars move slowly across the sky over very long periods. The closer a star is, the more easily we can see its movement. Stellar parallax is a shift in a star's apparent position due to Earth's orbit.

Astronomers have found a clever new way to slice and dice the flickering light from a distant star in a way that reveals the strength of gravity at its surface. That is important because a star’s ...

If you Google famous astronomers, the list is nearly all men, from Copernicus to Galileo through time to Sir Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking. There are a few women's names, but you've probably never ...