Milky Way

Susan Clark is helping to unravel the mysterious workings of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, a critical missing piece of the galactic puzzle.

Some neighborhoods in the Milky Way may be better suited for making habitable planets than others.

Our galaxy's stars keep a record of its past. By reading those stories, astronomers are learning more about how the Milky Way came to be — and about the galaxy we live in today.

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants.

Ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays twist and turn on their way to Earth, which has made it nearly impossible to identify the colossal monsters that create them.

For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.

Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.

Hot spots have been discovered orbiting just outside the supermassive black hole at the galaxy’s center. Their motions have given us the closest look at that violent environment.

Astronomers generally stay away from the “Zone of Avoidance.” When one astronomer didn’t, she found a giant cosmic structure that could help explain why our galaxy moves so fast.