Articles by

Ken Croswell

A distant quasar’s black hole is oddly huge for its galaxy

The first-ever sighting of starlight from a galaxy hosting one of the most distant quasars known has...

Saturn’s first Trojan asteroid has finally been discovered

Astronomers have finally found an asteroid keeping pace with Saturn in its orbit around the sun. Such...

The nearest midsized black hole might instead be a horde of lightweights

Contrary to a previous report, there’s no evidence of an intermediate-mass black hole in Omega Centauri, the...

A distant quasar may be zapping all galaxies around itself

One of the farthest known quasars seems to have shut down the creation of new stars in...

The North Star is much heavier than previously thought

The star marking true north is a good deal heavier than we thought. The North Star is...

Sulfur was key to the first water on Earth

A chemical element that’s not even in H2O — sulfur — is the reason Earth first got...

The black hole–powered jet in galaxy M87 is making stars explode

High-speed gas shooting from the galaxy M87 is causing stars to go nova, a study suggests, and...

The Milky Way may be spawning many more stars than astronomers had thought

The Milky Way is churning out far more stars than previously thought, according to a new estimate...