Pulsars are more than just cool blinking lights shining across the universe. The discovery of the first binary pulsar paved the way for gravitational wave astronomy astronomy today.

In order to understand how we study the universe, we need to talk a little bit about light. Light is a form of energy. Its wavelength tells us its energy and color. Spectroscopy allows us to analyze those colors and determine an object’s...

In 1965, MIT's Lincoln Laboratory saw their Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1 (LCS-1) launched into Earth orbit. It was an empty aluminum sphere and couldn't do any science of its own. But the world's most boring disco ball has played a huge...

More than a billion years ago, two black holes in a distant galaxy locked into a spiral, falling inexorably toward each other, and collided. "All that energy was pumped into the fabric of time and space itself," says theoretical...

Afterschool Universe is an out-of-school-time astronomy program for middle school students that explores basic astronomy concepts through engaging hands-on activities and then takes participants on a journey through the Universe beyond...

At first glance, the bone-dry landscape of the Atacama Desert in Chile might seem inhospitable. But, it's prime real estate for astronomers. This desert is now home to the largest ground-based radio telescope in the world! The telescope...

On Feb 11, 2016 Scientists at LIGO announced that they had detected gravitational waves for the first time. In the press conference heard round the world, they showed the tell-tale waveforms indicating that huge event in which two black...

The ill-fated "discovery" of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background, explained in a cosmology rendition of Disney's "The Circle of Life" from the movie "The Lion King"

Andrew Norton shows how diffraction gratings produce characteristic sets of light spots. (Part 5 of 5) Playlist link - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE829A78F461BD20 Transcript link -...

Andrew Norton demonstrates the effects of changing the driving frequency of the oscillator that's creating the wave. (Part 2 of 5) Playlist link - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFE829A78F461BD20 Transcript link -...

Everything you need to know about gravitational waves. In February 2016 scientists announced the first detection of gravitational waves by humans on Earth. This was a huge, world changing, discovery. The gravitational waves were caused...

Here it is, folks: the end. In our final episode of Crash Course Astronomy, Phil gives the course a send off with a look at some of his favorite topics and the big questions that Astronomy allows us to ask.

Thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and Space Telescope Science Institute for supporting this video. This video is about the astronomical amount of astronomical evidence for black holes, ranging from x-ray binaries with...

Scientists may have found the light from two merging black holes, and a gas giant, without the gas.

Astronomers have theorized about an invisible star made up of theoretic particles in the past, but did we recently detect the gravitational waves of two of them colliding? Plus, extraterrestrial rocks from a decades-old mission keep...

While doing some light reading of data from a telescope, Conny Aerts made a breakthrough that allowed her to lead the charge in the field of asteroseismology and win her the 2022 Kavli Prize in Astrophysics.

It’s been a great week for space explosions! Astronomers learned more about the mechanism that causes novas by looking at the nova V906 Carinae, and the brightest supernova ever recorded shed some new light on pulsation pair-instability.

Recently NASA launched a large, powerful telescope into space, where scientists hope it will help them learn more about the origins of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope is designed to study invisible light waves, which will...

Our universe is strange, wonderful and vast, says astronomer Natasha Hurley-Walker. A spaceship can't carry you into its depths (yet) -- but a radio telescope can. In this mesmerizing talk, Hurley-Walker shows how she probes the...

The Crab Nebula is one of the most studied things in the sky, but it took glimpses through various wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum to get a full picture of what’s hiding inside!

So we've made it all the way to the 20th century with the history of astronomy. Plenty had to happen to get us to that point, but the most amazing stuff is yet to come! Shortly after Einstein did his best work, a guy named Edwin Hubble...

Antarctica, the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest continent on Earth, is a land of extremes. With 99.6% of its surface covered in ice, it offers unique conditions for climate research. International scientists and researchers...

During its K2 campaign, NASA's Kepler spacecraft observed the eighth planet in our solar system, Neptune. Kepler detected small changes in Neptune's brightness caused by the planet's daily rotation, the movement of clouds, and even...

On September 14th, 2015, a ripple in the fabric of space, created by the violent collision of two distant black holes over a billion years ago, washed across the Earth. As it did, two laser-based detectors, 50 years in the making – one...