Christopher Crockett

Nearly 11 billion years ago, the universe churned out stars at a rate 10 times greater than today. And yet all the starlight in the cosmos appears no brighter than a 60-watt light bulb seen from miles away.

In astronomy news last week: The most luminous known quasar is devouring three galaxy companions, while a newly discovered ghostly satellite of the Milky Way hints at hordes more just waiting to be found.

A low-mass sun with few elements heavier than helium provides hope that the Galaxy might contain survivors from the very first generation of stars.

Long straight parallel lines on the satellite's surface could be droppings from Saturn's rings, one of the moons, or a passing comet, researchers suggest.

Following three weeks of downtime, engineers have cleared out a mechanical blockage in one of Hubble's gyroscopes and returned the observatory to full science operations.

Hordes of debris trapped by Jupiter and Neptune have distinct colors that mark them as possibly the last remnants of the material that built the giant planets.

Donatiello I is a tiny galaxy about 10 million light-years away, and it was discovered by an Italian hobbyist with a homemade telescope.

Four solar system satellites — and one putative exomoon — might be big enough and far enough from their home worlds to hold onto tiny moons for billions of years.

A massive star lost most of its mass before exploding and creating a neutron star — and a second nearby neutron star might have been the thief.

An increase in the rate of cosmic rays detected by Voyager 2 indicates that the spacecraft is approaching the heliopause, where the solar wind gives way to the interstellar medium.

A failure of a gyroscope used to point and stabilize the Hubble telescope caused the observatory to safely shut down while engineers determine a fix.

Exoplanet Kepler-1625b might harbor a moon the size of Neptune—potentially the first confirmed exomoon—but researchers urge caution in interpreting the data.

Clues hidden in today’s orbits hint at the violent origins of the solar system — and a rogue giant kicked out long ago.

The Milky Way's two largest companion galaxies may have once been a threesome — but new data from the Gaia satellite leaves the satellites' history an open question.

After a 10-day lockdown to cooperate with a criminal investigation, the New Mexico observatory is back to looking at the Sun.

A vortex in the stratosphere mirrors a famous six-sided cyclone in the clouds below

NASA’s Juno spacecraft reveals unusual magnetism that suggests a convoluted interior

Nanoscale templates made from films of self-assembled polymers could be fabricated with fewer defects by putting the films on a curved surface.

By manipulating the momenta of ultracold atoms, researchers demonstrate a quantum walk—a potential ingredient for quantum search algorithms.

Strange entities called collexons hint at undiscovered physics among interacting subatomic particles in a semiconductor.