Optics

The colors of dead stars come in a surprising rainbow of choices

NASA’s PUNCH mission is showing a rarely seen aspect of our nearest star—the churning chaos of the solar corona

A future NASA telescope could spot atmospheric phenomena on planets orbiting other stars

The newfound star S301 orbits the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole so closely that its view of the heavens gets twisted

NASA’s newest major observatory will include the most advanced planet-imaging tech ever flown in space. Here’s how it works

Binoculars and other far-range optics span a gamut of price points. Here’s what separates top-tier from entry-level

How big would a telescope need to be to see Earth’s dinosaurs from 66 million light-years away? Think big—and then think bigger

Stars emit lots of green light, but our eyes don’t let us see them that way

In our topsy-turvy universe, sometimes the farther away an object is, the bigger it seems to be

Bizarre phenomena called light echoes create strange, shifting shapes seen in some telescopic images and help astronomers chart the heavens above

An attosecond—or 0.000000000000000001 second—is no time at all for a person. That is not so for electrons, atoms and molecules, and laser-wielding scientists are revealing the action

Telescopes in space give us a view we literally cannot get from the ground