By Eugenie Samuel Reich Dale Frail couldn’t resist the prospect of watching a black hole swallow its prey. Frail, who is in charge of the Very La...

By: Miriam Kramer Published: 05/08/2013 08:25 AM EDT on SPACE.com The huge, hot mess of cosmic gas that feeds the colossal black hole at the cente...

Astronomers still don't know much about how the universe developed during its infancy, but tiny galaxies known as "Green Peas" may hold big clues. ...

Astronomers know a thing or two about galaxies, including how many there are in the universe (at least 100 billion) and the different shapes they take...

By: Elizabeth Howell Published: 03/20/2013 07:00 AM EDT on SPACE.com Some dwarf galaxies in the early universe travelled so fast that their gas wa...

By: Clara Moskowitz Published: 03/08/2013 05:22 AM EST on SPACE.com The giant black hole at the center of the Milky Way is preparing to gobble up ...

By: Clara Moskowitz Published: 03/06/2013 01:03 PM EST on SPACE.com The distance to one of the Milky Way's next-door neighbors, a satellite galaxy...

By: Mike Wall Published: 02/27/2013 10:19 AM EST on SPACE.com The Milky Way's far outer reaches may harbor a shell of stars left over from a lon...

By: Tia Ghose Published: 02/20/2013 08:01 AM EST on SPACE.com Six speedy stars rocketing through space at up to 2 million miles per hour were li...

By: Mike Wall Published: 02/06/2013 11:10 AM EST on SPACE.com Billions of Earth-like alien planets likely reside in our Milky Way galaxy, and the n...

By: Joseph Castro, LiveScience Contributor Published: 01/24/2013 12:07 PM EST on LiveScience Despite having tiny brains, dung beetles are surprisi...

By: SPACE.com Staff Published: 01/08/2013 04:04 PM EST on SPACE.com Astronomers have spotted a new component of the Milky Way galaxy's skeleton —...

By: SPACE.com Staff Published: 01/07/2013 01:43 PM EST on SPACE.com This story was updated at 1:55 p.m. EST. The Milky Way hosts at least 17 bill...

By Ken Croswell Although scientists know the masses of the sun and Earth, it's a different story for the galaxy. Mass estimates range widely: At the ...

Outdoor photographer/videographer Christoph Malin filmed day and night skies above the volcanic island of La Palma, in the Canary Islands, for more th...

By Daisy Yuhas Are there dark doings near the center of the Milky Way? That may be so when it comes to the collision of dark matter particles. Althou...

By: Jeanna Bryner, LiveScience Managing Editor Published: 10/23/2012 10:42 AM EDT on LiveScience Identifying your home or street from a Google E...

By: SPACE.com Staff Published: 10/22/2012 06:44 PM EDT on SPACE.com Astronomers have spotted a rare X-ray star explosion near the center of our Mi...

By: Charles Q. Choi Published: 10/03/2012 01:07 PM EDT on SPACE.com Black holes might seem too monstrous to keep company, but surprising new fin...

By: Clara Moskowitz Published: 10/02/2012 01:57 PM EDT on SPACE.com In a forensic twist on astronomy, scientists turned sleuths are trying to tr...

If you go out at night in a rural, unlit area, you cannot miss that band of hazy light that seems to be arcing across the sky. Neither did ancient civilizations miss this bright streak we now call the Milky Way, and they came up with a variety of imaginative, mythical explanations for it.

By: SPACE.com Staff Published: 08/23/2012 04:22 PM EDT on SPACE.com Our home galaxy may be special, but it's not one of a kind. For the first time...

By: Charles Q. Choi Published: 08/23/2012 07:16 AM EDT on SPACE.com Scientists investigated our galaxy's central molecular zone, which contains th...

By: Charles Q. Choi Published: 08/02/2012 02:58 PM EDT on SPACE.com Black holes have long been cosmic mysteries, even as research in the past deca...

By: Geoff Gaherty Published: 07/05/2012 06:52 AM EDT on SPACE.com It's possible that most people on Earth have never seen the Milky Way, the gal...