In around 5 billion years, the sun will run out of the fuel needed for nuclear fusion in its core. This will cause its inner core to collapse under the force of the sun's own gravity. At this point, ...

How far away are the most distant objects in the Universe? How has the Universe expanded over the course of its history? And therefore, how big and how old is the Universe since the Big Bang? Through ...

Study of an under-appreciated subclass of stars that brighten and dim periodically brings to light their potential use as cosmic yardsticks — out to distances of a few hundred million light years.

An image of the Cepheid variable star RS Puppis. The most accurate observation to date of distant stars that periodically change in brightness may spark a rethink of the rate at which the universe ...

To look out at the night sky and marvel at the seemingly endless canopy of stars is one of the oldest and most enduring human experiences we know of. Since antiquity, we've gazed towards the heavens ...

The photo in this article is titled the Hubble Extreme Deep Field. For several reasons this image is probably the most remarkable cosmic image ever made. First, it is the farthest we have ever seen ...

University of Newcastle provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. Let’s talk numbers for a moment. The moon is approximately 384,000 kilometres away, and the sun is approximately 150 ...

A long-running dispute about how fast our universe is expanding just became even more entrenched. New and more precise measurements of stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the ...

This week I would like to discuss the second rung on the cosmic ladder. The parallax method we discussed last week is the first rung on this ladder. Unfortunately, the parallax method is limited to ...

ONE of the most basic facts about the universe is that it is expanding. This observation, made by Edwin Hubble (pictured) in 1929, leads to all sorts of mind-stretching ideas. That the universe is ...

The cosmic distance ladder could soon have another rung. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. In around 5 billion years, the sun will ...