How can astronomers pierce through the interstellar fog of the Milky Way—not to study distant objects, but to understand the fog itself? It just takes a little light. On January 12, 2003, NASA ...

The Milky Way's interstellar medium—that is, the dust and gas that threads between our galaxy's billions of stars—is an abundant yet elusive material. That means the latest image from NASA's James ...

This suggests that the interstellar medium is constantly being stirred, not settling into just two categories. Further from the galactic plane, gas density drops off quickly with height, and warm gas ...

Molecules containing noble gases shouldn’t exist. By definition, these chemical elements — helium, neon, argon, krypton, xenon and radon — are the party poopers of the periodic table, huddling in the ...

Priscilla Diane Chapman Frisch, a University of Chicago Research Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics and a world-leading scientist on the heliosphere and the local interstellar medium, died on ...

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft made history in 2012 by entering interstellar space, leaving the planets and the solar wind behind But observations from the pioneering probe were puzzling with regard to ...

In astronomy, the interstellar medium (ISM) is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. Earth may have been exposed to interstellar clouds which may have ...

This week, Astronomy & Astrophysics publishes new 3D maps of the interstellar gas situated in an area 300 parsecs (about 1,000 light-years) around the Sun. A French-American team of astronomers ...

The Sun warms the Earth, making it habitable for people and animals. But that’s not all it does, and it affects a much larger area of space. The heliosphere, the area of space influenced by the Sun, ...