Small, rocky planets can coalesce around a wide variety of stars, suggesting that Earth-like alien worlds may have formed early and often throughout our Milky Way galaxy's history, a new study reveals ...

The Milky Way as a laboratory for civilizations Any attempt to chart alien societies has to start with the structure of The Milky Way itself, a disk roughly 100,000 light years across with hundreds of ...

I/ATLAS has caused quite a stir over the last year, inviting astronomers to update what they know about other solar systems ...

A blip of light in the outer reaches of the Milky Way might be a bizarre black hole born at the beginning of time itself—and the long-sought solution to the mystery of dark matter. Astronomers are ...

As a galactic archaeologist, my job is to reconstruct the past of our galaxy – and read the signs of its future.

"I usually try not to call things 'Rosetta stones,' but this is as close to a Rosetta stone as anything I've seen," said co-author John Johnson, also of Caltech. "It's like unlocking a language that ...

If advanced aliens lived on a planet within a few hundred to a thousand light years away from Earth, then vast numbers of their signals must already have crossed Earth without being noticed, a new ...

Get ready, stargazers: The Milky Way could be coming to a sky near you. Our galaxy is positively teeming with billions of stars that become bright and vibrant in the cosmos at certain times of the ...

"Milky Way season," when our galaxy's bright center is most visible, is now beginning in the Northern Hemisphere. The best time to see the Milky Way in the US is generally from March to September.

The Milky Way galaxy's bright center is most visible in the United States from March to September. No special equipment is needed to see the galaxy, but dark skies away from city lights are essential.